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The International 
Theolodca 




EDITORS' PREFACE 

THEOLOGY has made great and rapid advances 
in recent years. New lines of investigation have 
been opened up, fresh light has been cast upon 
many subjects of the deepest interest, and the historical 
method has been applied with important results. This 
has prepared the way for a Library of Theological 
Science, and has created the demand for it. It has also 
made it at once opportune and practicable now to se- 
cure the services of specialists in the different depart- 
ments of Theology, and to associate them in an enter- 
prise which will furnish a record of Theological 
inquiry up to date. 

This Library is designed to cover the whole field of 
Christian Theology. Each volume is to be complete 
in itself, while, at the same time, it will form part of a 
carefully planned whole. One of the Editors is to pre- 
pare a volume of Theological Encyclopaedia which will 
give the history and literature of each department, as 
well as of Theology as a whole. 



The International Theological Library 

The Library is intended to form a series of Text- 
Books for Students of Theology. 

The Authors, therefore, aim at conciseness and com- 
pactness of statement. At the same time, they have in 
view that large and increasing class of students, in other 
departments of inquiry, who desire to have a systematic 
and thorough exposition of Theological Science. Tech- 
nical matters will therefore be thrown into the form of 
notes, and the text will be made as readable and attract- 
ive as possible. 

The Library is international and interconfessional. It 
will be conducted in a catholic spirit, and in the 
interests of Theology as a science. 

Its aim will be to give full and impartial statements 
both of the results of Theological Science and of the 
questions which are still at issue in the different 
departments. 

The Authors will be scholars of recognized reputation 
in the several branches of study assigned to them. They 
will be associated with each other and with the Editors 
in the effort to provide a series of volumes which may 
adequately represent the present condition of investi- 
gation, and indicate the way for further progress. 

Charles A. Briggs 
Stewart D. F. Salmond 



The International Theological Library 



ARRANGEMENT OF VOLUMES AND AUTHORS 

THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA. By Charles A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., 
Graduate Professor of Theological Encyclopedia and Symbolics', Union 
Theological Seminary, New York. 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE OLD TESTA- 
MENT. By S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Professor of Hebrew 
and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. {Revised and Enlarged Edition. 

CANON AND TEXT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By FRANCIS 

Crawford Burkitt, M.A., Norrisian Professor of Divinity, University 
of Cambridge. 

OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. By Henry Preserved Smith, D.D , 
sometime Professor of Biblical History, Amherst College, Mass. 

\Noiv Ready. 

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By 

Francis Brown, D.D., LL.D., D.Litt., Professor of Hebrew, Union 
Theological Seminary, New York. 

THEOLOGY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. By A. B. Davidson, 
D.D., LL.D., sometime Professor of Hebrew, New College, Edinburgh. 

\_A r oiu Ready, 

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF THE NEWTESTA* 
MENT. By Rev. James Moffatt, B.D., Minister United Free Church 
Dundonald, Scotland. 

CANON AND TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By CASPAR RENE 

Gregory, D.D., LL.D., Professor of New Testament Exegesis in the 
University of Leipzig. ^ Now Rmdy ^ 

THE LIFE OF CHRIST. By WlLLIAM Sanday, D.D., LL.D. Lady 
Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.' 

A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE By 

Arthur C. McGiffert, D.D., Professor of Church Plistory, Union Theo- 
logical Seminary, New York. { Now liead ^ 

CONTEMPORARY HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT By 

Frank C. Porter, D.D., Professor of Biblical Theology, Yale University 
New Haven, Conn. J ' 

THEOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By George B. Stevens, 
D.D., sometime Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale University New 
Haven, Conn. \Noxv Ready. 

BIBLICAL ARCH/EOLOGY. By G BUCHANAN Gray, D.D, Professor 
of Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford. 

THE ANCIENT CATHOLIC CHURCH. By Robert RAINY, DD 

LL.D., sometime Principal of New College, Edinburgh. [Now Ready. 

THE EARLY LATIN CHURCH. By Charles BlGG, D.D., Regius Pro- 
fessor of Church History, University of Oxford. 



Fhe International Theological Library 



THE LATER LATIN CHURCH. By E. W. WATSON, M.A., Professor 
of Church History, King's College, London. 

THE GREEK AND OR! ENTAL CH U RCH ES. By W. F. ADENEY,D.D., 

Principal of Independent College, Manchester. 

THE REFORMATION. By T. M. LINDSAY, D.D., Principal of the United 
Free College, Glasgow. [2 vols. A'ow Ready. 

SYMEOLICS. By Charles A. Briggs, D.D., B.Litt., Graduate Professor 
of Theological Encyclopaedia and Symbolics, Union Theological Seminary, 
New York. 

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. By G. P. Fisher, D.D., 
LL. D. , Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Yale University, New Haven, 
Conn. [Revised and Enlarged Edition. 

CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. By A. V. G. Allex, D.D., Professor of 
Ecclesiastical History, Protestant Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, 
Mass. [Novo Ready. 

PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. By ROBERT Flint, D.D., LL'.D., some- 
time Professor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh. 

THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS. By George F. Moore, D.D., LL.D., 

Professor in Harvard University. 

APOLOGETICS. By A. B. Bruce, D.D., sometime Professor of New 
Testament Exegesis, Free Church College, Glasgow. 

\_Revised and Enlarged Edition. 

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD. By William N. Clarke, D.D., Professor 
of Systematic Theology, Hamilton Theological Seminary. 

THE DOCTRINE OF MAN. By WILLIAM P. Paterson, D.D., Professor 
of Divinity, University of Edinburgh. 

THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST. By H. R. Mackintosh, Ph.D., Professor 
of Systematic Theology, New College, Edinburgh. 

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF SALVATION. By George B. Ste- 
vens, D.D., sometime Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale University. 

[Now Ready. 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. By WILLIAM Adams 
Brown, D.D., Professor of Systematic Theology, Union Theological 
Seminary, New York. 

CHRISTIAN ETHICS. By Newman Smyth, D.D., Pastor of Congrega- 
tional Church, New Haven. [Revised and Enlarged Edition. 

THE CHRISTIAN PASTOR AND THE WORKING CHURCH. By 
Washington Gladden, D.D., Pastor of Congregational Church, Columbus, 
Ohio. [Novo Ready. 

THE CHRISTIAN PREACHER. [Author to be announced later. 

RABBINICAL LITERATURE. By S. Schechter, M.A., President of 
the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York City. 



£be international ffbeoIOQical library 



EDITED BY 



CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D.D., 

Graduate Professor of Theological Encyclop&dia and Symbolics, Union 
Theological Seminary, New York; 



The late STEWART D. F. SALMOND, D.D., 

Principal, and Professor of Systematic Theology and New Testament Exegesis, 
United Free Church College, Aberdeen. 



CANON AND TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

By CASPAR RENE GREGORY, 
D.D., LL.D. 



International Theological Library 



CANON and TEXT 



OF THE 



NEW TESTAMENT 



. BY 

CASPAR REN£ GREGORY 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1907 



^ 



/-/&*),& 



TO 

MY OLD FRIEND 

JOHN KEMP 

OF LINCOLN'S INN BARRISTER AT LAW 

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF MUCH 
HELP AND SYMPATHY 



CANON AND TEXT 



A Gene al View .... 
CANON 

Introduction ..... 

A. The word Canon, pp. 15-20; — B. The Jewish Canon 
pp. 20-26; — C. Intercommunication, pp. 26-31; — D 
Book- Making, pp. 32-36 ; — E. What we seek, pp. 36-42 

I. THE APOSTOLIC AGE: 33-90(100). 
II. THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE : 90-160 

III. THE AGE OF IREN^US : 160-200 . 

Witnesses, pp. 111-159; — Possibilities of Tradition 
pp. 159-162 ; — Testimony to each book, pp. 162-212 
— Books read in church, pp. 213-216 

IV. THE AGE OF ORIGEN : 200-300 . 

Books in the New Testament, pp. 219-234 ; — Books 
near the New Testament, pp. 234-255 

V. THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS : 300-370 . 

VI. THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA: 
370-700 ...... 

XEXX .....••• 

I. PAPYRUS 

II. PARCHMENT 

III. LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 

Sinaiticus, p. 329 ; Vaticanus, p. 343 

IV. SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 

V. LESSON-BOOKS 

VI. TRANSLATIONS . 

Syriac, p. 396 ; Coptic, p. 403 ; Latin, p. 407 

VII. CHURCH WRITERS . 

Second Century, p. 430; Third Century, p. 431; 
Fourth Century, p. 432 

VIII. PRINTED EDITIONS 

Complutensian, p. 439 ; Erasmus, p. 440 ; Estienne, p. 
441 ; Mill, p. 445 ; Bengel, p. 447 ; Wettstein, p. 447 ; 
Harwood, p. 449 ; Lachmann, p. 452 ; Tischendorf, 
p. 455 ; Tregelles, p. 460 ; Westcott and Hort, p. 463 

IX. THE EXTERNALS OF THE TEXT 

Order of Books, p. 467 ; Harmony of Gospels, p. 470 ; 
Euthalius, p. 472 ; Verses, p. 474 

X. EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT 

Classes of Text, p. 480 ; Original Text, p. 483 ; 
Re-Wrought Text, p. 486; Polished Text, p. 491; 
Syrian Revisions, p. 494 ; Official Text, p. 500 ; 
Interesting Passages, pp. 508-526 



FAGES 

5-295 
7-42 



43-54 

55-110 

111-217 



218-255 

256-272 

273-295 
297-528 
299-316 
317-328 
329-369 

370-383 

384-393 
394-418 

419-436 
437-466 



467-478 



479-528 



THE CANON AND THE TEXT 



OF THE 



NEW TESTAMENT. 



A GENERAL VIEW. 

The consideration of the canon and the text of the New 
Testament forms a preface to the study of what is called intro- 
duction. It is true that these two topics have sometimes of 
late years been remanded to the close of introduction, have been 
treated in a somewhat perfunctory way, and have been threatened 
with exclusion from the field. The earlier habit of joining them 
together and placing them at the front was much more correct. 
Now and then they were termed as a whole " general introduc- 
tion." The rest of introduction, the criticism of the contents of 
the books in and for themselves, was then called "special 
introduction." The use of these names does not seem to me 
to be necessary. The introduction to the study of the New 
Testament is made up of three criticisms, of the critical treatment 
of three things. 

The criticism of the canon tells us with what writings we 
have to deal, affords us the needed insight into the circumstances 
which accompanied the origin of these writings, and examines 
not only the favourable judgment passed upon these writings 
by Christianity, but also the adverse judgment that fell to the lot 
of other in a certain measure similar writings. This first criticism 
then rounds off the field for the New Testament student. Other 
writings he may touch upon by way of illustration. He need 
treat in detail of no others. It is true that a few scholars have 
i 



2 THE CANON AND THE TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 

thrust into the introduction to the New Testament a series of 
other books not belonging to the New Testament, and that a 
collection of such books was issued under the title of the " New 
Testament outside of the received canon." This proceeding is 
to my mind unnecessary, unwise, and contrary to the rules of 
scientific research. It produces confusion and relieves no 
difficulty. 

The second criticism is the criticism of the text. The 
criticism of the canon settled upon large lines, drew a circle 
around, the object of study. If we take a given book in hand 
we know from the criticism of the canon all that we need to 
know of its external fate, and we know that it is a due object of 
our attention. But upon opening it, or during our work upon it, 
we may find that a certain section in it, possibly a section that 
has excited our interest and has led us to much expense of time 
and labour, — we may find that this section is really not a proper 
and genuine part of the book in question. Further, even if 
the book mooted contained no complete paragraph that was 
spurious, it would be possible that difficulties, and that of a 
serious nature, arise from a cause similar to the one just 
mentioned. We might form a certain conception of an important 
passage and base upon this conception a historical conclusion, a 
dogmatical theory, or an important theme in a sermon, only to 
learn at a later date that a phrase or a word which was vital to 
our point was not a part of the true text of the passage, that it 
had been the result of an unintentional or even of an intentional 
transformation, substitution, or addition long centuries ago. It 
is the criticism of the text alone that can save us from such 
trouble. The criticism of the text, if we may play upon the 
words, must do intensively that which the criticism of the canon 
does extensively ; the canon touches the exterior, the text the 
interior. It must delve into the libraries, turn the leaves of the 
manuscripts, and determine for us what words and combinations 
of words make up each of the books to which we have to turn. 
Is the state of the text at any point uncertain, this criticism tells 
us about it, and gives us the materials for forming a judgment for 
ourselves. 

The third criticism is the criticism of the contents of the 
books. It finds its way clear so soon as the two previous 
criticisms have done their work. It proceeds then to examine 



A GENERAL VIEW 3 

in detail all questions that affect the contents of the books. It 
is not exegesis, although, as in both of the other criticisms, the 
exercise of exegetical keenness will be necessary at every step. 
It would be hard to combat the declaration that the most 
searching, profound, and complete exegesis is of the greatest 
assistance to the work of the criticism of the contents. Yet 
the two are distinct, and the criticism of the contents must 
theoretically and practically precede exegesis proper, however 
certain it is that after completing the criticism of the contents 
and passing on to and completing the exegesis of the books, the 
scholar will return to all three of the introductory criticisms and 
modify the judgments there passed. It is the interweaving of 
all life. In the present work we have to do solely with the first 
two criticisms. 



4 



THE CANON 



OF 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 



THE CANON. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The first duty of a scholar is to secure a clear view of his aim 
in taking up a given subject. In the case of a large number of 
the writings which treat of the right that the New Testament 
books have to a place in that collection, this duty has so far as 
I can see been neglected. The discussions touching the proper 
contents of the New Testament have been dominated by the 
word canon. This word has, it may be imperceptibly, come to 
determine the course of the inquiry. The general supposition is 
that a canon exists. It is in approaching the subject taken for 
granted as a thing long ago proved, or so certainly and well 
known as to need no proof, that a certain canon was settled 
upon at a very early date in the history of the Christian Church. 
And the word canon in connection with this view means a 
sharply denned and unalterable collection made, put together, 
decided upon by general Church authority under the guidance 
of the Holy Spirit. The long held theory of the inspiration of 
every word in the books of the Bible needed as an accompani- 
ment an inspired selection of the inspired books. For the 
purposes, then, of the inquiring scholar the canon of the New 
Testament is the book or the collection of the books of the New 
Testament, and that of the New Testament precisely in the 
extent and within the limits of the one that we use to-day. 

From this starting-point it has been the custom to enter 
upon the " history " of the canon. The canon is presupposed 
as something that of right exists and is beyond all doubt. All 
then that is to be done is to trace the various steps that led in 
the early age of the Church to its formation and determination 
or authorisation, that is to say, it is only necessary to write the 



8 THE CANON 

history of the canon, as though we should speak of the history of 
the Church or of the history of Greece. If in examining the 
subject one thing or another seem uncertain or not clear, it is 
no matter. That is a mere accident of history. The canon 
exists, that is plain, whether we know or do not know when and 
why, according to what rules and regulations, and by whom it 
was formed. The inquiry then serves merely to determine the 
question of more or of less in the contents of the canon, or of 
more or less in the testimony to the existence and contents of the 
canon. These things are all very well ; they are right, and are 
of weight in clearing up the whole field. Nevertheless this is 
not the right aim, not the right way to put the question. The 
reason why it has done less mischief than it otherwise might 
have done, is that the larger number of the books of the New 
Testament were from a very early period beyond all doubt in 
the possession of and were diligently used by many Christians. 

That way of opening the case was wrong. The first thing to 
be done is to determine whether or not there is a canon. For 
the moment we may here hold fast to the current use of the 
expression. The first duty of the inquirer in this field is to 
determine whether or not there existed at an early period in the 
history of the Christian Church a positively official and authorised 
collection of books that was acknowledged by the whole of 
Christendom, that was everywhere and in precisely the same 
manner constituted and certain, and that corresponded exactly 
to the New Testament now generally in use in Western Europe 
and in America. Compare the case with that of the word 
doctrine or dogma. A dogma is a doctrinal statement that has 
been officially, ecclesiastically defined, that has been determined 
upon by a general council of the Church. Were it not open to 
view that such official definitions are in our hands, the first aim 
of the dogmatician would be to inquire whether there were any 
dogmas in existence. We have now to ask, whether or not 
there is a canon of the New Testament. Our first aim is not 
the history of the canon, but the criticism of the canon. Should 
it be objected that we cannot criticise a thing that does not 
exist, the reply to this just observation is, that the criticism of 
the canon, in case a canon does not exist, resolves itself into 
the criticism of the statements about a presupposed canon, 
statements that have been rife for a long while. We have, on 



INTRODUCTION 9 

the one hand, to examine the traditionally accepted statements 
and declarations bearing upon the origin or the original existence 
of the books of the New Testament and upon the process by 
which they were gathered together into one collection. On the 
other hand, we have to seek in the surroundings of the early 
Church, in the early Church in so far as it occupied itself with 
the earliest books, in the early Church as the guardian of the 
earliest books, — we have to seek for signs of the combination 
of, the putting together of, the uniting of, two or more books in 
such a way that they were to remain together as forming a 
special and definite volume of a more or less normative character 
for the use of Christians and the Church. We say of Christians 
and of the Church. The two are not of necessity the same. It 
would be quite possible to think of the combining into one 
volume of various books which would be interesting and useful 
and even adapted to build up a Christian character, and which, 
therefore, would be desirable for Christians, which nevertheless 
would not be suited in the least for the public services of the 
Church. We shall see later that it was possible for some writings 
to be upon the boundary between these two classes, between the 
books for Christians in their private life and the books for use in 
church. 

Should any one fear that it must be totally impossible to 
give a due answer to the question as to the existence of a canon 
before the whole field has been carefully examined, the difficulty 
or the impossibility must at once be conceded. As a matter 
of fact, however, the difficulty is hardly more than an apparent, 
or a theoretical, or a momentary one. For if we proceed 
upon the supposition that no canon is to be presupposed, that 
we are not to determine that there is a canon until we discover 
it in the course of our inquiry, the difficulty will be only apparent 
or theoretical. Our researches upon the lines already pointed 
out will continue unhampered, either until a canon offers itself 
to view, or until, having reached the present without detecting 
signs of a canon, we conclude that none ever existed. The 
answer to the question must come forth from the threads of 
the discussion. It is indifferent at what point. In so far as 
the fear alluded to proceeds from a solicitude for the dearly 
cherished canon of tradition, the difficulty may prove to be but 
temporary. For the current assumption is, that the canon is 



10 THE CANON 

there almost from the first, that the books of the New Testament 
can scarcely be conceived of as all in existence for an appreciable 
space of time before the swift arm of ecclesiastical power and 
forethought gathered them from the four winds of heaven and 
sealed them in the official volume. Should we, then, in the 
earliest periods of the history of the Church find that the assumed 
canon fails to present itself to our view, there will, it is true, 
be a certain shock to be borne by those who have thus far held 
to the existence of the canon. But that will pass quickly by and 
leave a calm mind for the treatment of the succeeding periods. 

In one case or another a question might emerge from the 
discussion that would perplex the inquiring mind. Should 
the testimony for a given book seem either to be weak in general 
or to offer special and peculiar reasons for uncertainty, the query 
would at once arise, whether it have had, and whether it still 
to-day continue to have or cease to have, a right to hold the 
place it actually occupies in the New Testament volume. Such 
doubt might even find a proper place in consideration of the 
rules which were either clearly seen to be, or which have long 
been traditionally assumed to be, the rules of the early Christians 
for accepting or for rejecting books. In such a case it would 
not be absolutely necessary to think of a false judgment, of a 
false subjective conception, on the part of the Christians of that 
day, of facts or of circumstances that stood and stand in fully 
the same manner at the command of the Christians then and 
of Christians to-day. For it is altogether conceivable that a 
scholar to-day should be able to gain a wider and more compre- 
hensive view of the circumstances of that early time, as well 
as greater clearness and greater depth of insight into the mental 
movements of the period, than a Christian scholar of that very 
time could have secured. It may be possible or necessary to 
say that the decision at that time would have been ren- 
dered in another sense if the judges had known what we now 
know. 

This question would in outward practice take the form of 
asking, whether or not we intend to-day either to limit or to 
extend the number of the books in the New Testament, whether, 
for example, we should like to leave out the Epistle of James 
because Luther did not like it, or the Revelation because it 



INTRODUCTION II 

is too dream -like, or the Epistle to the Hebrews because it is 
not from Paul's mouth, or the Second Epistle of Peter because 
it was so little known at the first, or the Acts of the Apostles 
partly because it is not mentioned until a late date, partly because 
it offers to us a great many puzzling questions, or the Fourth 
Gospel because it does not say : " I, John the son of Zebedee, 
write this present book and place my seal upon it, which shall 
remain visible to every man to all eternity." Do we really 
purpose to ask the Bible societies to publish the New Testament 
without one or the other of these books? This question will 
strike younger men as very strange. It will seem less singular 
to the older ones who remember the apocryphal books of the 
Old Testament in our common Bibles. These books had for 
centuries in many circles maintained their place beside, among, 
the books of the Old Testament. The Protestant Church looked 
askance at some of them, condemned them all, and put them 
out of the Bibles in common use, so that to-day it is not easy 
for any but scholars to find access to them. It was scarcely 
well-advised to turn those books out of the sacred volume ; for 
they offered not only much valuable historical matter, but as 
well religious writings suited to elevate the soul. They went far 
to bridge over the gulf between the Old and the New Testa- 
ment. From this — to return to the practical question just 
put — it will at once be apparent to every one that we do not 
cherish the wish to reduce the number of the books of the 
New Testament. 

The companion thought is just as possible. It may be 
necessary to ask, whether after due consideration of the 
circumstances it may become our duty to say that other writings 
besides those that are found in our New Testament to-day are 
to be declared worthy to have a place in it. Perhaps some 
one may succeed in proving that if the Christians of that 
day had had our knowledge touching a given book they would 
have received it as a proper part of the New Testament collection. 
This thought may assume the form, that we are in a position 
to declare that a certain book, which in some circles was then 
regarded as either belonging \o the New Testament or as 
being fully equal to the writings of the New Testament, would 
certainly also on the part of the authoritative or ruling circles 
of the time have met with a more favourable reception and have 



12 THE CANON 

been placed among the books of the New Testament had those 
high circles had our present knowledge with respect to the book 
in question. But we have no desire to increase directly the 
number of the books in our New Testament or to add to it 
as a second volume the so-called " New Testament outside of 
the received canon." 

Lest any one should be led by these observations to suppose 
that it is our purpose to turn the whole of the New Testament 
upside down, or at least to make it appear that the greater 
part of it is of doubtful value, we hasten to state that we have 
no such intention, and that we regard anything of that kind 
as scientifically impossible. The books of the New Testament 
are in general to be recognised as from an early date the 
normative writings of the rising Christian Church. It is not 
easy to see upon what ground a man could take his stand, 
who should set out to prove, let us say, that only one Gospel 
or only one letter of Paul's was genuine, or even that not a single 
New Testament book was genuine. In that case Christianity 
must have developed itself from a cell or a convolution in the 
brain of a Gnostic of the second century, and also have unfolded 
itself by a backward motion into the books of the so-called 
New Testament. But, if the Church were prepared to accept 
this, we may be sure that some one would at once call the 
existence of that Gnostic, or of any and every Gnostic, in ques- 
tion. It is, then, not our purpose either to declare or to prove 
that the New Testament is not genuine. 

People, however, often treat the Bible, and in particular 
the New Testament, as if they were fetish worshippers. They 
refer to the books, to the paragraphs, to the sentences, and to 
the words with a species of holy fear. They refuse to allow 
the least portion of it to be called in question. They consider 
a free, a paraphrastic use of its sentences to be something 
profane. They hold that the words of the New Testament 
are to be reproduced, quoted, used with the most painful accuracy 
precisely as they stand upon the sacred page. They think 
that anything else, any free use of the words, any shortening or 
lengthening of the sentences, falls under the terrible curse 
pronounced in the Revelation of John at the close of its 
prophecies. It may readily be granted that the general thought 



INTRODUCTION 1 3 

of those verses may in special cases find a fitting application 
within a limited circle, in order to keep thoughtless men from 
a trifling use of these books and of their words. As a curse, 
the words should be remanded to the time and the circle of 
the author of that particular book. It is never desirable, never 
admissible to use the truth and the words of the truth as a 
means of frightening the ignorant, and as little should we try 
to protect the words of the truth by a bugbear. The truth 
suffers, it is true, under every impure application of its contents, 
and as well under every less careful observance of, or every 
twisted and untrue use of, the form of its contents. The writings 
of the New Testament are not to be treated with levity. But 
they are just as little to be used in a mysterious way to 
frighten people. 

It will be our duty here first of all to examine the somewhat 
kaleidoscopic word canon, since we shall otherwise stumble 
at every step in tracing its use in profane and ecclesiastical 
history. After that it will be advisable to cast a glance at the 
way in which the Jews treated their sacred books. The Jews 
stood as patterns to a certain degree for the men who gathered 
the books of the New Testament together, seeing that at the 
first these books were brought into close connection with the 
books of the Old Testament. As a matter of course no Jewish 
authority can have had a hand in the collection of the Christian 
books. Yet we must seek in Jewish circles for a clue to the 
thoughts that guided the Christian collectors. The question 
as to the freedom of travel and the ease or difficulty of com- 
munication between different parts of the known world of that 
day, or of the Roman Empire with its surroundings, might seem 
at the first blush to lie far aside from our inquiry. If I do 
not err, it really has much weight for our researches, and we 
shall devote a few moments to it. It will also be apparent to 
every one that we must give some attention in advance to the/ 
way in which books were written, given to the public, and 
reproduced in the early centuries of our era. These four points : 
the canon, the Jewish canon, intercommunication in the Roman 
Empire, and bookmaking, complete the necessary preparation 
for the work before us. We shall then describe briefly what 
it is to which we have to direct our attention in entering 



14 THE CANON 

upon the examination of the early history and literature of the- 
Church. 



In the criticism of the canon itself, it would be most fortunate 
if we could, as is desirable in every treatment of historical matter, 
build our foundation or lay out the course of our researches 
concomitantly, not only according to time, but also according 
to place. Since that is, alas ! impossible, it would be a good 
thing to pass through the whole field of this criticism twice, 
discussing everything the first time according to the succession 
of the years and centuries, and the second time according to 
the contemporaneous conditions in the several divisions of the 
growing Church, in the Churches of the different countries, peoples, 
and tongues. This would, however, exceed the limits of our 
space, and we shall therefore have to content ourselves with 
treating our subject according to time. We shall speak of 
six periods. The distinction of these periods is to a large extent 
not severely necessary, but it is convenient. 

The first period extends from the year 30 to 90 after Christ, 
and may be termed the period of the Apostles. In it the most 
of the books with which we have to do were written. The 
second period, from 90 to 160. places before our eyes the earlier 
use of the books that are in the New Testament, and the 
gathering them together into groups, preparing for their com- 
bination into a single whole. This period is, as a matter of 
fact, by far the most important period in the course of our 
discussion. For it is during these years of this post-apostolic 
period that these books pass from a common to a sacred use. 
The third period, from 160 to 200, we may call the period 
of Irenaeus. Here the Old Catholic Church is on a firm footing, 
and the life in several of the great national divis'.ons of the 
Church begins to be more open and more confident. The 
fourth period, from 200 to 300, bears the stamp of the giant 
Origen, but brings with it many a valiant man, not least 
Dionysius of Alexandria and Tertullian of Carthage. The fifth 
period, from 300 to 370, the period of Eusebius, sees the opening 
of the series of great councils in the Council of Nice in 325. 
Eusebius himself, the quoter of the earlier literature of the 
Church, has done a vast deal for the definition of the canon. 
The sixth period, from 370 to 700, bears the name of the much 



INTRODUCTION—^. THE WORD CANON 1 5 

defamed scholar, the great theologian Theodore of Mopsuestia, 
and brings us into the work of Jerome and of Augustine. By 
that time the treatment of the books of the New Testament 
has become to such a degree uniform in the different parts of 
the Church, or has, in case of the variation of some communities 
from the general rule, attained such a stability, that it is no 
longer necessary to follow it up in detail. Should a canon 
not be determined upon before the close of that period, should 
a given book not have won for itself a clear recognition by 
that time, there is but little likelihood that the one or thp, other 
ever will come to pass. 



A. The Word Canon. 

The word canon seems to spring from a Hebrew root, unless 
indeed this should be one of the roots that extend across the 
bounds of the classes of languages and may claim a universal 
authority. The Hebrew verb " kana " means to stand a thing up 
straight, and then takes the subsidiary meanings of creating or 
founding, and of gaining or buying. The first or main sense 
leads to the Hebrew noun " kane" that at first means a reed. Of 
course such a reed was for a man without wood at hand an excellent 
measuring-rod, and the word was applied to that too ; and it 
was taken horizontally also and used for the rod of a pair of scales, 
and then for the scales themselves. In Greek we find the word 
" kanna " used for a reed and for things made by weaving reeds 
together, and the word "kanon " for any straight stick like a yard- 
stick or the scale beam. In Homer the latter word was used for 
the two pieces of wood that were laid crosswise to keep the leather 
shield well rounded out. The word " kanon" which we then write 
canon in English, found favour in the eyes of the Greek, and 
passed from the sense of a measuring-rod to be used for a plumb- 
line or for a level, or a ruler, for anything that was a measure or 
a rule for other things. It entered the mental sphere and there 
it also stood for a rule, for an order that told a man what was 
right or what he had to do. In sculpture a statue modelled by 
Polycleitos was called a canon, for it was so nearly perfect that it 
was acknowledged as a rule for the proportions of a beautiful 
human body. In music the monochord was called a canon, seeing 



1 6 THE CANON 

that all the further relations of tones were determined from it 
as a basis. We call the ancient Greek writers classics, because 
they are supposed to be patterns or models in more ways than 
one ; the grammarians in Alexandria called them the canon. And 
these same grammarians called their rules for declensions and 
conjugations and syntax canons. In chronology the canons were 
the great dates which were known or assumed to be certain and 
firm. The periods in between were then calculated from these 
main dates. The word was thus very varied in its application ; 
it might mean a table of contents, it might mean an important 
principle. 

A favourite use of the word was for a measure, a definition, 
an order, a command, a law. Euripides speaks of the canon of 
good, Aeschines of the canon of what is just. Philo speaks o£ 
Joshua as a canon, as we might say, an ideal for subsequent 
leaders. Before the time of Christ I do not know that it was 
applied to religion, but it was applied in morals. Other words 
were often used by preference for positive laws and ordinances, 
and canon was used for a law or a command that only existed in 
the conception of the mind or for an ideal rule. 

Christians found good use for such a word. Paul used it in 
the sixth chapter of Galatians and the sixteenth verse, where after 
speaking of the worthlessness of circumcision and of non- 
circumcision and the worth of a new creation, he added : mercy 
be upon all those that walk according to this canon. And in the 
tenth chapter of Second Corinthians, verses thirteen to sixteen, 
he alluded to the measure of the canon, to our canon, and to a 
foreign canon. Our good women of to-day will not admire the 
phrase used in the letter of the Church at Rome to the Church 
at Corinth, the so-called letter of Clement, which speaks (i. 3) of 
the women " who are under the canon of obedience." The same 
letter also says (7. 2): "Let us quit, then, the empty and vain 
cares and pass on to the glorious and honourable canon of our 
tradition." And in still a third sentence of it (41. 1) we find the 
words : " without going out beyond the set canon of his due 
service." Hegesippus (Eus. H. E. 3. 32) speaks of people "who 
try to corrupt the sound canon of the saving preaching " or of 
the proclamation of salvation. The author of the Clementine 
books finds the " canon of the Church " in that in which all Jews 
agree with each other, for he conceives of the Church merely 



INTRODUCTION—^. THE WORD CANON 1 7 

as a spiritual Judaism. The Christian Church began to feel 
its union in a more distinct manner than at the first, and the Old 
Catholic Church began to crystallise during the second century. 
The Christianity of this movement was a development, but a 
development backwards, for, like the author just mentioned, it 
found its basis in the Old Testament. Christianity was no longer 
with Paul free from the law. It had put itself again under 
the law, even though with manifold modifications. For this 
Christianity our word was applied in a general sense; the 
ecclesiastical canon was the token of the union of the Old and 
the New Testament. Clement of Alexandria (Str. 6. 15) called 
"the ecclesiastical canon the harmony and symphony of both 
law and prophets with the covenant or the testament given when 
the Lord was here," while in another passage (6. 11) he refers 
to the "musical ecclesiastical harmony of law and prophets, 
joined also' with apostles, with the gospel." He also speaks of 
the canon of the truth. Elsewhere (7. 16) he speaks of those 
who like heretics " steal the canon of the Church." Polycrates, 
the bishop of Ephesus, in writing to Victor of Rome appealed 
to the witness of men who followed after the canon of the faith. 
Origen, Clement's pupil, refers (de Pr. 4. 9) to the canon " of the 
heavenly Church of Jesus Christ according to the succession 
of the apostles." He still thinks of the canon as something 
which lies more in the idea ; the ecclesiastical proclamation 
or preaching was, on the contrary, something actual. 

Little by little the word canon came to be used in the Church 
for a concrete thing, for a definite and certain decision. This is 
in one way a return to the origin, only that it is no longer a foot- 
rule or a spirit-level, but an ecclesiastical determination. It was 
about the middle of the third century that Cornelius, the bishop 
of Rome, wrote to Fabian, the bishop of Antioch, about Novatus, 
and complained (Eus. H. E. 6. 43) that, after being baptized when 
he was ill, he had not done what, "according to the canon of 
the Church," was necessary. Firmilian seems to have, the word 
canon in mind shortly after the middle of the third century, 
when he writes (Cypr. Ep. 75) about a woman who imitated a 
baptism so well " that nothing seemed to vary from the ecclesi- 
astical rule " ; he probably would have used the word canon if he 
had been writing in Greek instead of in Latin. In the year 
266 a synod at Antioch (Mansi, i. 1033), in referring to Paul of 
2 



I 8 THE CANON 

Samosata, declared one of his doctrines to be "foreign to the 
ecclesiastical canon " ; the synod used the cautious expression 
" we think it to be," but added : " and all the Catholic Churches 
agree with us." The edicts of Constantine after 311 made the 
conception of Christianity upon which the Catholic and Apostolic 
Church was based, that is to say, the ecclesiastical canon of the 
Catholics, a recognised religion. Had it been a religion with a 
visible god, its god would then have had a right to a place in the 
Pantheon at Rome. Thus the ecclesiastical canon, the canon of 
the Church, had become a set phrase to denote the rule of the 
Church, the custom and general doctrine of the Church. Often 
merely the word canon was used The Synod of Ancyra in the 
year 315 referred to it as the canon, and so did the Council of 
Nice in 325 repeatedly. The plural appears to view first about 
the beginning of the fourth century. Perhaps in the year 306 
Peter, the bishop of Alexandria, in writing of repentance calls the 
conclusions canons, and Eusebius speaks of Philo as having 
the canons of the Church. At first the decisions of councils were 
called dogmas, but towards the middle of the fourth century, in 
the year 341 at Antioch, they also came to be called canons. 
Thus far, as we have seen, the word has not been applied, in the 
writings which are preserved to us, to the books of Scripture. It 
would, however, appear that about the year 350 it gradually 
came to be applied to them, but we do not know precisely at what 
moment or where or by whom. It has been assumed that this 
application might well be carried back as far as the time of 
Diocletian, and to an imperial edict of the year 303 that ordered 
the Christian Scriptures to be burned ; but we have not the least 
foundation for such a theory. Felix, the official charged with 
the duty of caring for religion, and of preventing the worship and 
spread of religions that were not recognised by the State, said to 
the Bishop Paul : " Bring me the scriptures of the law," and 
Csecilian wrote in 303 to Felix and alluded to the scriptures of 
the law. . But this expression is so properly and so naturally 
suggested by the Old Testament and Jewish use of the word law, 
as to make it totally improper to argue that the word law here is 
canon. Much less does it seem to me to be admissible, until we 
receive evidence that is not now known, to attribute the use of 
the cognate words canonical and canonise in connection with the 
Scriptures to Origen. It is by no means certain that the word was 



INTRODUCTION — A. THE WORD CANON 19 

not used earlier than I have suggested, but it is well to move 
cautiously. The first application of the term to Scripture that is 
thus far known is not direct, in the word canon, but indirect in 
cognate words like those just named. The fifty-ninth canon 
(Mansi, ii. 574) of the Synod at Laodicea of about the year 363 
determines that "private psalms should not be read in the 
churches, nor uncanonised books, but only the canonical [books] 
of the New and Old Testament." And in the year 367, when 
Athanasius wrote the yearly letter (Ep. Fest. 39) announcing to 
the Church the due calculation of the day upon which Easter 
would fall, he said : "I thought it well ... to put down in 
order the canonised books of which we not only have learned 
from tradition but also believe [upon the evidence of our 
own hearts?] that they are divine." Here we have nothing 
to do with the general contents of Athanasius' statement 
or of the canon of the Synod of Laodicea, but only with the 
technical term. Both use these terms canonical or canonise 
in such a way as to show that they were in common use, 
or had been so much used as to be generally understood. It 
may be granted that even if a reader of the festal letter did 
not happen to have met with the word before, he would have 
been able to gather its meaning from this letter itself without 
the least difficulty. Nevertheless, I suppose that it had been 
used before quite aside from the Synod of Laodicea, and there- 
fore I attribute its rise in this sense to the middle of the century. 
Having reached this use of the word for the Scriptures, we 
must ask in what sense they, the books of the Bible, were called 
canonical, for the word has two meanings that look in opposite 
directions. A given thing might be canonical because something 
had been done to it, that is to say, because it had been put into 
the canon, or it might be canonical because it had in and of itself 
a certain normative character. A clergyman was called canonical 
because he had been canonised, or in other words, not because 
he had been a saint and had been declared to be a saint, but 
because he had been written down in the list, the canon, let us 
say, the table of contents of the given bishopric. And he was 
also, though probably only later, called canonical because he was 
one of those who were bound to live according to a certain rule 
or canon. What was the case with a book of the Bible? It 
seems to me to be likely, in spite of the fact that wc have no 



20 THE CANON 

direct testimony to the custom as a custom, that Christian 
scholars and bishops before the time of Eusebius were in the 
habit of making lists of the books that they included in the 
Scriptures. There is one such list, containing some of the books 
of the New Testament, of which we have a fragment in the 
Muratorian leaves, and it may be as early as the year 170. Aside 
from that, the only list known to us by name before the time of 
Eusebius is one containing the books of the Old Testament 
which Melito, the bishop of Sardes in the third and fourth 
quarters of the second century, says that he had made ; he had 
gone to the East for the purpose of studying scripture history, and 
made the list of the Old Testament books after he had learned 
all about them. It may then well be the case that at least in 
some places the books of the New Testament were called 
canonical because they had been added to such a list, were found 
in such lists. Were any one in doubt about a given book, he 
could beg the bishop to tell him whether or not it stood in the 
list or canon. The use of the word in this sense does not in any 
way preclude its having been used in the other sense. It is in 
every way probable that the books of the Old Testament at first, 
and then later also the books of the New Testament at an early 
date, came to be called canonical in the sense that they contain 
that which is fitted to serve as a measure for all else, and in 
particular for the determination of faith and conduct. It was in 
connection with both meanings, but especially with the latter, 
that the thought of a totally finished and closed up collection of 
books was attached to the word, and that this thus limited series 
of writings was called the canon as the only external and visible 
rule of truth. Clement of Alexandria had mentioned the canon 
of the truth without binding it up with the Scriptures. Two 
centuries later Isidore of Pelusium referred to " the canon of the 
truth, the divine Scriptures." 



B. The Jewish Canon 

In order to secure a wide basis for comparison, it would be 
of interest to the Christian student, if space allowed, to look at 
other religions and ask what sacred books they have, and in 
what way these books were determined to be sacred. The 



INTRODUCTION— B. THE JEWISH CANON 21 

Brahmans have four Vedas, the Rigveda, the Samaveda, the 
Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda, as well as supplementary parts 
called Brahmanas. The canonical works are the first three 
Vedas with their sections of the supplement. These were given 
by divine revelation and are therefore called " hearing " ; God 
spoke and men listened. Other books are mere traditions, and 
are called " memory " as remembered tradition. The Rigveda, 
containing ten books with 1017 hymns, is supposed to date 
between 4000 and 2500 before Christ. Many Brahmans hold 
that the Vedas were pre-existent in the mind of deity, and 
therefore explain away all references to history and all human 
elements. 

The canon of the Buddhists is different in different places. 
The canon of the northern Buddhists appears to have been 
determined upon in their fourth council at Cashmere in the 
year 78 after Christ, or four hundred and two years after the 
death of Buddha. If we turn to the late centre of Buddhism in 
Tibet, where it found acceptance in the second quarter of the 
seventh century after Christ, we find a canon of 104 volumes 
containing 1083 books; this is named Kanjur. The Tanjur 
supplements it with 225 (not canonical) volumes of commentary 
and profane matter. The collection of the canonical books is 
so holy that sacrifices made to it are accounted very meritorious. 

In Egypt we find the Book of the Dead, which might almost 
be called a handbook or a guide-book for departed spirits, 
containing the needed information about the gods and the future 
world. It is called the canon of the Egyptians; but there is 
no great clearness in reference to the book in general, and 
its canonicity in particular. We know even less about the 
Hermetical Books, which are attributed to the god Thoth or 
Hermes Trismegistos. Clement of Alexandria counted forty-two 
of them, but Seleucus in Iamblichus speaks of 20,000, and 
Manetho of 36,525. It may be that these large numbers apply 
to the lines contained in the books ; in that case the great 
difference between the numbers would be intelligible. 

Rome honoured the Sibylline books. After the destruction, 
the burning, of the Capitol in the year 8^ before Christ, the State 
ordered the books of the fates that were in private hands to be 
gathered together in order to replace the old books that had 
perished. Copies of the books were sought for all around, and 



22 THE CANON 

especially in Asia Minor. It is said that above two thousand 
of these private books were on examination rejected and burned 
as worthless imitations. The renewed volumes were placed in 
the temple of the Palatine Apollo, and unfortunately ruthlessly 
burned by Stilicho in the fifth century. Here the notions of 
inspiration and canonicity do not seem to be strongly marked. 

The Persian Avesta, as we have it to-day, offers a mere 
fragment of the original work, and does not seem to be sur- 
rounded by a special halo of inspiration. The first part, called 
Jasna or Prayers, contains, among other matter, five Gathas or 
hymns, which are directly attributed to Zarathustra himself, who 
lived more than six centuries before Christ. 

The Koran is supposed to be a product or an embodiment 
of the Divine Being, and only pure and believing men are to be 
allowed to touch it. It is uncreated. It lay on a table beside 
the throne of God written on a single scroll. In the night 
Alkadar of the month Ramadan Gabriel let it down into the 
lowest heaven, and it was imparted to Mohammed bit by bit 
according to necessity. Mohammed caused his secretary to 
write it down ; and he kept it, not in any special order, in a box. 
Later it was edited, rewrought into the shape in which we have 
it now. 

Before we leave the realm of myth and uncertainty it may 
be well to recall the statement of the Talmud, that the law of 
Moses almost equals the divine wisdom, and that it was created 
nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the creation 
of the world, or a thousand generations before Moses. 

According to the Jewish tradition, the law, the Tora, was 
written by Moses himself, even the last eight verses about his 
death. Some thought that it was put by God directly into the 
hands of Moses, and that either all at once or book by book. 
Among the Jews, questions as to the canonicity, or let us say 
as to the authenticity, and authority of one book or another 
have been much discussed, less, however, for the purpose of 
laying aside the book suspected, and more for the greater glory 
of the successfully defended book. A curious form of the 
debate is to be found in the question whether the book treated 
of soiled the hands. If it did, it was canonical. If not, not. 
This point is said to have originated in the time of the ark, and 



INTRODUCTION—/?. THE JEWISH CANON 23 

to have been devised, that is to say, the declaration that the 
canonical writings soiled the hands was devised to prevent 
people and prevent priests from freely handling the copy of the 
law kept in the ark. 

Three classes of men attached especially to the law, the 
Sofrim or bookmen or scribes or the Scripture students, the 
lawyers, and the teachers of the law, the rabbis. Quotations 
from the Scriptures were introduced by the formula : " It is 
said," or, " It is written." So soon as the Jews, but that was at 
a late day, observed that the copying of the law led to errors, 
they instituted a critical treatment of the text, trying to compel 
accuracy of copying. They counted the lines, the words, and 
the letters, and they cast aside a sheet upon which a mistake had 
been made. 

We may assume that some written documents were in the 
hands of the Israelites from the time of Moses, but we can in 
no way define them. They doubtless included especially laws, 
and then as an accompaniment traditions. When, however, 
we speak of the Israelites, it does not follow that all existing 
documents were to be found on one spot, and in the hands of 
one librarian or keeper of archives. It is a matter of course 
that the persons first to care for, to write, and keep such 
documents were the heads of families and the priests. Whether 
they were of a directly legal character like laws and ordinances, 
and deeds of gift or purchase, or whether they were of a more 
historical description like accounts of the original ages of the 
tribes, or of humanity, the recital of travel and of wars, and, 
above all, the birth lists of the great families, — it is a matter of 
course that the persons who had these would be the sheiks, the 
old men, the tribal heads. In many cases such a man in 
authority will have had his priest, who will at the same time 
have been a scribe, as a proper guardian of these treasures. In 
other cases the sheik will have been his own priest and his own 
keeper of the rolls. The documents will then have been largely 
local and of a limited general value. But it will have been a 
thing of common knowledge that one or two centres, I name 
Shiloh as a likely one, were possessed of particularly good 
collections. To these the more intelligent will have applied for 
copies of given writings, and the less well educated for informa- 
tion about their history, their family, and their rights. It is 



24 THE CANON 

clear that in Hosea's day, in the eighth century before Christ, 
many laws held to be divine were known, even though he does 
not make it clear to us just what laws these were. And the 
Second Book of Kings shows the high authority conceded to 
the law at the time of Josiah, in the last quarter of the seventh 
century, in spite of the fact that the previous disappearance of 
the law, that the thought of its having been forgotten and having 
needed to be found again, gives a shock to those who would 
fain believe that the priests and all the laws were active and 
in force in all their vigour and extent from the time of Moses 
onward. We may date the authoritative acceptance of the five 
books of the law, or if anyone prefers to put it differently, the 
renewed acceptance, or the first clearly defined acceptance of 
that whole law, at the time of Ezra, about the middle of the 
fifth century before Christ. The "front" and the "back" pro- 
phets, or the historical books and the great prophetical works, 
may have been determined upon soon after that time, although 
it is suggested that they were not really of full authority before 
the second century before Christ. We do not know about it ; 
nothing gives us a fixed date. The same is true for the third 
part of the Hebrew Bible. Book after book in it seems to have 
been taken up by the authorities, who now can have been none 
other than the scribes and lawyers in Jerusalem. Whether the 
process was one of conscious canonising or authorisation from 
the first for these books, or whether at first the writings were 
merely collected and preserved rather than authorised, it would 
be hard to say. The latter seems probable. So far as can 
be determined, no new book was added after the time of the 
Maccabees. But various books seem to have been called in 
question as late even as the first century after Christ. 

We have as a result of this process, in describing which I 
have used the word canon and its cognates in the current sense, 
an Old Testament in three parts : Law, Prophets, Writings. The 
third part received then in Greek the name " Holy Writings." 
It is important for us at this point, in view of the close con- 
nection between the Old Testament and the New Testament, to 
ask : What is the definiteness and surety of the work of making 
or settling the canon of the Old Testament? This question is 
of all the greater interest because the time of the commonly 
assumed determination of the canon of the New Testament is 



INTRODUCTION— B. THE JEWISH CANON 25 

not separated by any very great interval from the last of the 
dates above mentioned. Even in our rapid survey of the field — 
and a more detailed inquiry would only have made the uncer- 
tainties more palpable — every one at once perceives that the 
authoritative declarations as to the divine origin of the books 
leave much to be desired for those who are accustomed to hear 
the canon of the Old Testament referred to as if it were as firm 
as a rock in its foundations. We do, it is true, find a massive 
declaration for the acceptance of the law, in part in the seventh 
century, in part and finally in the fifth century before Christ. 
Yet even in that case we are not absolutely sure of the precise 
contents of the law, not absolutely sure even for Ezra, probable 
as it is that he had all or nearly all our Pentateuch. And then 
what a gap opens between the period of Moses, the lawgiver, 
and the time of Ezra, or even of Josiah. If we assume that 
Moses lived about the year 1500, and that Ezra led the exiles 
back to Palestine about the year 458 before Christ, a thousand 
years had passed between. But leave that point. For the 
second part, the Prophets, we have no such word of a definite 
authoritative proclamation as to its or their authenticity and 
dominating value. And for the third part, there is not only no 
word of an official declaration, but there is also every sign and 
token of a merely casual, gradual taking up into use of one book 
after another. It would be desirable, were it possible, to inquire 
closely into the special sense in which each book was accepted, 
and what the amount of divine authority was, that the men 
accepting it attributed to it. That is not possible. The so-called 
canon of the Old Testament is anything but a carefully prepared, 
chosen, and guarded collection in its first state. If, however, 
any one should be inclined on that account to find fault with 
the Jews, we must remember that they not only were in the 
work of " canonising " and of guarding their sacred books in 
those early times far superior to all other known peoples, but 
that they at a later date and up to the present have proved 
themselves to be unsurpassed, unequalled preservers of tradition 
written and unwritten. The Christian Church owes them in 
this respect a great debt. 

The glimpse at other sacred volumes aside from the Bible 
has shown us that our collection of holy books is more concise, 
better rounded off, and, we might almost venture to say in 



26 ' THE CANON 

advance of our present inquiry, better accredited than any others, 
save the Koran. But it has also made it plain to us that it has 
not been the custom of men in general to "canonise" their 
sacred books by a set public announcement ; that sacred books 
have, on the contrary, usually found recognition at first only 
in limited circles, and have afterwards gradually but almost 
imperceptibly or unnoticed passed into the use of the religious 
community of the country. It will be necessary to bear this in 
mind when we come to examine the testimony for the divine or 
ecclesiastical authority of the books of the New Testament 



C. Intercommunication in the Roman Empire. 

It would be difficult to discuss intelligently the question of 
the spread and general acceptance of the books of the New 
Testament among the Christians of the various lands and 
provinces, without referring to the possibilities of travel then 
and there. Probably the majority of modern people who turn 
their thoughts back to the Roman Empire in the time of the 
apostles, think of those countries and their inhabitants as to a 
large extent unable to communicate easily and rapidly with each 
other, and they would be much surprised to learn that aside 
from railroads, steamers, and the electric telegraph, there would 
be little to say in favour of European means of communication, 
that a Roman in Greece or Asia Minor or Egypt would have 
been able to travel as well as most of the Europeans who lived 
before the year 1837. It is to be granted that at that time journeys 
to China, South Africa, and North America were not customary. 
But no one wished to go to these then unknown or all but 
unknown regions. Nowadays people are proud to think that 
they can travel or have travelled all over the world. At that 
time many people travelled pretty much all over the world that 
was then known. At the time of Christ the known world was 
little more than the Roman Empire. We might describe it as 
the shores of the Mediterranean, if we should take the northern 
shores to include the inland provinces adjacent to the provinces 
directly on the seaboard. That would carry us to the Atlantic 
Ocean across Gaul, to the Black Sea across Asia Minor, and to 
the Red Sea across Egypt. 



INTRODUCTION — C. INTERCOMMUNICATION 2J 

The ease of intercourse depended in a large measure upon the 
ships of the Mediterranean. If the sailors then disliked winter 
voyages between October and March, there are not a few people 
to-day who avoid the sea during those months even when they 
can find luxurious steamers to carry them. With the ships that 
they used they were able to sail very fairly. For the voyage from 
Puteoli to Alexandria only twelve days were necessary ; and if the 
wind were good, a ship could sail from Corinth to Alexandria 
in five days. The journey from Rome to Carthage could be 
made in two ways, either directly from Ostia at the mouth of 
the Tiber, and that was a trifle over 300 miles or with a 
good wind three days, — or by land 350 miles to Rhegium 
(Reggio), across the strait an hour and a half to Messana, 
around Sicily to Lilybaum (to-day Marsala), and then with a 
ship in twenty-four hours to Carthage, that would be 673 miles 
in all. From Carthage to Alexandria by land was 1221 miles. 
The direct journey to the East led by land to Brundusium 
(Brindisi), from which a ship could reach Dyrrachium in a 
day or a day and a half. From Dyrrachium the road passed 
through Heraclea, Edessa, Pella, Thessalonica, Philippi, and on 
to Byzantium (now Constantinople), in all 947 miles. Starting in 
the same way and turning south to Athens the journey would be 
761 miles. If the traveller had the Asiatic side in view he 
could in Thrace go to Gallipoli and in an hour cross over to 
Lampsacus, the starting-point for Antioch in Syria. From 
Antioch he could go east to the Euphrates or south to Alexandria. 
From Rome to Antioch was 1529 miles, from Rome to the 
Euphrates 1592 miles, from Rome to Alexandria 2169 miles. 
If a traveller chose, he could go all the way to Byzantium by 
land, going north and around by Aquileia, which makes 
1 2 1 8 miles for the trip. On the west from Rome to Spain, to 
Gades was 1398 miles. 

The shipping came later to be, if it was not at the time of 
which we have to speak, to a great extent in the hands of certain 
companies, although not named as Cunarders or Hamburg- 
Americans. The freight ships were by no means very small, and 
they carried large cargoes of grain with the most punctual 
regularity. From Spain they brought the beautiful and spirited 
Spanish horses for the public games ; these horses were so well 
known that the different species were at once distinguished by the 



28 THE CANON 

Romans, who adjusted their wagers accordingly. We must of 
necessity suppose that the freight ships also carried people, the 
people who had time, and especially those who had not money 
to pay for better ships. Paul's journey as a prisoner from 
Caesarea to Rome gives us a good example of a freight and 
passenger boat, and shows us how the winter affected the 
voyage and the voyagers. The quick and, of course, dearer 
passenger carrying trade was served by lightly built ships, and 
these fast ships will have certainly been often more adventurous 
than the freight ships, and have hugged the land less. Particular 
attention seems to have been paid to the ships that acted as 
ferries or transfer boats on the great lines of travel, since they were 
necessary to the use of the roads. For example, from Brundusium 
to Dyrrachium, from Gallipoli to Lampsacus, from Rhegium to 
Messana. It is likely that frequent vessels passed from the 
western coast of Asia Minor towards the north-west, keeping east 
of Akte (to-day Mount Athos), and reaching behind Thasos, the 
harbour of Neapolis, which was only 1 5 miles from Philippi. 

Everyone has heard of the Roman roads. Beginning at 
Rome, they stretched through the whole empire. In a 
newly conquered land a Roman commander or civil governor 
hastened to lay out and to order the work on the roads that 
would be adapted to give the troops easy access to all parts of 
the country, and to allow of the utilising of the products of the 
different districts. Traces, remains, of such roads are to be seen 
to-day at many places from Scotland to Africa. Augustus had 
the whole empire measured by Greek geometers or civil engineers, 
and erected in the Forum at Rome the central pillar from which 
the miles were counted off to the most remote regions. Gaius 
Gracchus, 123 before Christ, was the first one to bring forward 
a law to set milestones at every thousand paces. The principal 
distances were given on the pillar itself. Besides that, Augustus 
caused a map of the world to be made and hung up in a public 
place, a map based on those measurements and on Agrippa's 
commentaries on them. Guide-books or lists of the places, and 
stations, and distances on the roads were prepared later ; there 
may very well at once have been copies made for the chief roads. 
Greece is said to have been less carefully provided with roads, 
probably owing in part to the difficulty of making roads among 
the mountains, in part to the fact that the inhabitants in general 



INTRODUCTION— C. INTERCOMMUNICATION 29 

caused no great trouble, — while Corinth and Athens were easily 
to be reached, — and in part to the circumstance that the sea was 
so near at hand that the roads were less necessary. 

The travel on these roads, as on our roads to-day, was of four 
kinds, on wheels, in sedan-chairs or litters, on beasts, and on foot. 
Seeing that the roads were in the first instance made for the 
benefit of the government, the officials of every degree had 
the preference on the roads. They often acted brutally and 
barbarously in compelling the inhabitants to let them have 
their horses and oxen to draw waggons, and in urging these 
animals to greater speed ; and special orders were issued for- 
bidding all such acts. Under given circumstances, travellers, and 
especially those in the public service, went very swiftly, changing 
horses at every station. Caesar rode from Rome to the Rhone 
in his four-wheeled travelling carriage in about eight days, 
making 77 miles a day. In his two- wheeled light carriage he 
made 97 miles a day. The public post from Antioch to 
Constantinople in the fourth century went, including stops, in 
about six days, about 4 miles an hour. Private persons used, 
according to their means, private carriages, or rode on horses, 
mules, or asses, or went on foot. There were societies that let 
out carriages or riding horses just as to-day. The foot traveller 
was more independent on the roa$ than anyone save the public 
officials. 

Not infrequently do we hear modern travel spoken of as if it 
were an entirely new invention. It is presupposed that in the 
times of which we are now treating, the population was almost 
exclusively man after man tied close to the one spot on which 
he had been born. This conception of the case falls wide of the 
mark. A very large number of people were often under way, and 
many were never long at rest. We have had occasion to refer 
more than once to officials journeying. The condition of the 
Roman Empire, the methods by which the lands and districts 
were governed and were kept in order and were defended, 
required a constant flow of soldiers, of officers, of officials of 
every rank hither and thither. These persons had, so far as 
their station entitled them to use horses and carriages, the use 
of the imperial post, which was forbidden to private persons. 
They had therefore also the precedence in the often clashing 
claims for relays at the stations, and in the choice of accommoda- 



30 THE CANON 

tion at the inns. It is scarcely necessary to urge that high 
officials also often had a considerable staff of assistants or a 
numerous household as a travelling accompaniment. If these 
were weighty travellers they found a balance in the other extreme, 
in the actors and players who passed from place to place to 
afford the people diversion ; doubtless they sometimes associated 
themselves closely with the higher and wealthier officials, lighten- 
ing by their arts the cares of office, or amusing and thus occupy- 
ing the thoughts of the populace and making them more content 
with the government. Precisely as to-day, countless invalids 
sought health far from home at baths, at healing springs, in 
milder or in cooler climes, and that not merely the wealthy, but 
also many a poor man. Rich Romans made excursions to their 
possessions in Gaul, in Spain, in Africa, and sometimes took a 
crowd of friends with them as well as a host of servants. Others 
travelled to see the peculiarities or the beauties of foreign peoples 
and foreign landscapes. Some went to consult oracles. Work- 
men went in numbers hither and thither, now driven like the 
wandering apprentice by the thirst for further knowledge of the 
secrets of their handiwork, now sent out by the rich at Rome 
or sent for by the rich abroad to ply their skilful arts in city 
houses or country houses in the provinces or in distant lands. 
Manufacturers, if we may use the term for those who rose above 
the level of the mere workman, also went from place to place, 
sometimes on compulsion, like Priscilla and Aquila who had to 
leave Rome, sometimes of their own will, to wit the journey 
which we may presuppose that Prisca and Aquila made previously 
to Rome, and their journey from Corinth to Ephesus. They were 
doubtless part makers and part sellers of tent cloth from camels' 
hair. Paul's own case is like that of the workmen, and he may 
at Corinth really have worked for Prisca and Aquila. It is not 
at all unlikely that he answered, or that he would have answered, 
an inquisitive policeman on reaching Corinth, that the purpose 
of his coming was to work at his trade in the bazaar. Reference 
to his mission would have been as unintelligible as it would have 
been suspicious in reply to such an official. Of course, merchants 
travelled. Many of them went with their goods on ships, others 
will have travelled by land, carrying their boxes and bales on 
waggons, on beasts, or on the backs of their slaves. An inscrip- 
tion tells us of a merchant in Hierapolis who travelled from 



INTRODUCTION— C. INTERCOMMUNICATION 3 1 

Asia Minor to Italy seventy-two times. And learning will have 
caused many a journey. Teachers went hither and thither to 
gather new classes of pupils, themselves gaining in wisdom by 
their new experiences. And students sought at Alexandria, at 
Athens, at Antioch, at Tarsus, or at Rome itself the teachers 
needed for their special subjects. Paul went to sit at the feet 
of Gamaliel at Jerusalem, and when he later went to Tarsus, his 
birthplace, again, it is likely that he visited the university. 

The things shipped from and to a land afford an insight into 
an important part of its relations to other lands, and show how 
easily or with how much difficulty men and writings could pass 
from one country to the other. It will suffice to limit ourselves 
to Palestine, for that is our centre. Tunny-fish were brought 
thither from Spain, and Egyptian fish also, I suppose from the 
Nile. Persia supplied certain nuts. Beans and lentils came 
from Egypt. Grits were sent from Cilicia, Paul's province. 
Greece sent squashes. The Egyptians sent mustard. Edom 
was the source for vinegar. Bithynia furnished cheese. Media 
was the brewery for beer. Babylon sent sauces. Greece and 
Italy sent hyssop, it is said; — why this plant was sought from 
afar I do not know ; perhaps it was a particular species. Cotton 
came from India. So much for the imports. A word as to the 
exports of this little country. The Lake of Tiberias produced 
salted and pickled fish ; the town Taricheae was the " Pickelries." 
Galilee was celebrated for its linen. And Judea supplied wool 
and woollen goods; Jerusalem had its sheep market and its 
wool market. 

This brief review makes it plain that the period before us is 
one of continual movement in all directions. For the spread of 
Christianity and for the subsequent widespread scattering abroad 
of, and the universal acceptance of the cherished literature of the 
early Christians, this journeying and sending of men and of goods 
from one end of the empire to the other could not but be of the 
greatest importance. Quite aside from the actual travel and 
the actual traffic, the mental attitude of men was one of calm 
consideration of, and not of suspicion or flashing hatred towards, 
all that came from another country. 



32 THE CANON 

D. BOOKMAKING OF OLD. 

In considering the fates and fortunes of books, it is important 
to ask how they were made. Here we may touch upon a few 
points bearing more upon the criticism of the canon. Other points 
will come up in connection with the criticism of the text. In 
many cases those who speak of the books of the New Testament 
pay little regard to this matter. They discuss it almost as if they 
thought that books were then produced, multiplied, bought and 
sold much as they are to-day. This is the less blameworthy 
from the circumstance that the history of these things has thus 
far been much neglected, and that the sources for the history in 
Greek circles are still largely a thing of conjecture, not well- 
known and carefully studied documents. We know much more 
about Latin than about Greek bookmaking. Our information 
touching Greek work in this line must be searched for in the 
byways and hedges of ancient Greek literature, in chance 
observations made in some important historical or theological or 
philosophical writings, and in the bindings and on the fly-leaves 
of old books. Bearing in view the difficulty of finding the 
materials for a judgment, we shall not be surprised to learn that 
opinions upon this topic go to one of two extremes. Some 
seem to suppose that books at that time, and especially among 
the Christians, could only be made, this is to say, written, with 
great difficulty and at large expense. They think of books at 
that day as exceedingly rare and dear. Others swing the 
pendulum to the opposite point, and declare that books were 
then as plenty as grass in the East ; the figure would perhaps be 
near the truth for one who should reflect upon the meagre 
herbage of those dry regions. Applying this to Christians and 
to the books of the New Testament, we are on the one hand 
liable to hear that these books were seldom in the hands of any 
but the wealthy and were at no time existent in great numbers, 
or on the other hand that families, to say nothing of Churches, 
— that families and individual Christians were in a position to get 
and keep and use freely the sacred writings. 

Nothing would be more dangerous than a too free generali- 
sation here. Time and place varied the circumstances. Time 
came into play, for the Christians were at first largely poor and 
largely or often viewed with distrust and dislike by their 



INTRODUCTION—/). BOOKMAKING 33 

neighbours, and would therefore not be in a position to have 
books made for them easily. At a later date, when more and 
more people gathered around the preachers and the Christian 
Churches grew apace, when the Christians began to be drawn 
more from the better educated classes and to have a wider 
acquaintance with literature and a greater facility in literary 
methods, and when they had secured for themselves from their 
heathen surroundings rather respectful tolerance or even admira- 
tion than ill-confidence and disdain, they certainly could and 
undoubtedly did order and use more books. That the place, 
however, must be considered is a matter of course. That is true 
even to-day in spite of all printing presses and publishing houses. 
In large cities, and in particular in cities like Antioch, Tarsus, 
Alexandria, in which many scholars taught and learned, studied 
and wrote, books could be easily and quickly gotten. And in 
such cities, among scholars of various climes, tongues, opinions, 
religions, and habits, scribes would busy themselves less with an 
inquisitorial consideration of their customers, and be at once 
ready to copy any sheet, any book placed in their hands. In 
the provinces, in small towns and villages, in out of the way 
places it must have been usually difficult, very often impossible, 
to get books, impossible to have them made. That does not 
imply that people there could neither write nor read, ignorant 
indeed of these arts as the majority of them may have been. 
But there was a difference between writing a private letter or a 
business letter and a bill, and writing a book. The difference 
was similar to that found to-day between the usual writers in 
private life and in business circles, and the art-writers who prepare 
beautiful diplomas and testimonials for anniversaries. 

In large towns the methods for the multiplication of writings 
that were used for profane books often could be and probably 
sometimes were applied to the books of the New Testament, 
and that especially as time progressed during the third and the 
opening fourth century. We have no exact information upon 
this point, and we are therefore left to conjecture. I am inclined 
to think that the usual bookmaking methods were seldom used 
by Christians. It does not seem to me to be likely that a 
heathen bookseller would, as a rule, apply himself with any great 
interest to the multiplication of Christian writings. The reasons 
that lead me to this conclusion are the following : 
3 



34 THE CANON 

(a) It is worth while to cast a glance at the general position 
of the Christians. It is true that antique life, modified by the 
climate of those southern lands, was to a far greater extent than 
life in northern Europe to-day spent before the eyes of other and 
often strange men. The Italian in Naples carrying on his trade 
on the sidewalk, or in a shed, or booth, or room opening with its 
whole front upon the street, is a fair type of the Eastern tradesman. 
In consequence, the life of the Christians in the East was to a 
large measure a public life, a life seen and known of men. But 
they were nevertheless for long decades in many places not 
openly acknowledged and recognised as Christians. Here and 
there, doubtless often, they met with tolerance and forbearance 
or even good treatment from the hands of their neighbours and 
of the authorities of the district, town, or city. That, however, 
cannot screen the fact that they will in general have found it 
prudent and often strictly necessary to keep the signs of their 
faith in the background, not to allow them to attract open notice 
when it was possible to avoid doing so. For this reason, then, 
Christians will in many places have refrained from applying to 
heathen scribes to copy the books of the New Testament. 

(b) The last phrase brings an important point. It would not 
be impossible that a scribe should become a Christian. But we 
may be sure that, as a rule, directly in connection with their daily 
bread, — remember, we have to do with book scribes not with 
everyday letter writers, — they will have been, and have been 
inclined to remain, heathen. Their work was the copying of 
heathen books. They copied for a living, it is true, and may 
often have not hesitated to take up Christian books. Never- 
theless, they may well have preferred the heathen books that they 
knew and liked, especially if they were writers of " known " and 
not in general of " new " books. Then, too, the Christians may 
have hesitated to let heathen scribes copy the writings because 
they were so much prized by them, may have hesitated to place 
them before the eyes and in the hands of men who would despise 
and scoff at these precious books. And this hesitancy will not 
seldom have been rendered greater by the fear that these scribes 
could for lewd gain denounce them to the authorities as the 
possessors of forbidden books, and give over the books into the 
hands of their enemies. 

(c) It must, in connection with the last sentence, be borne 



INTRODUCTION— D. BOOKMAKING 35 

in mind that although these books were sacred books, books 
held in particular honour by a certain number of men, they 
were in those days not in the least public books. These two 
considerations were of moment, in particular, before the close of 
the first quarter of the fourth century. Let us pass beyond that 
date. 

(d) After the greater influx of members in the early years 
of the fourth century, there probably were enough self-denying 
Christians at command who were able to write a book hand, 
and therefore to copy the Christian books. It is to be re- 
gretted that Eusebius, who caused fifty large manuscripts of 
the Bible to be copied for, at the command of, the Emperor 
Constantine, does not tell us to what scribes he entrusted 
the work. Had he been in Constantinople, in Constantine's 
town as they then began to name it, we should have turned 
our eyes to the regular book trade. For it is very likely 
that with the accession of Christianity to the throne many 
a public scribe, many a bookseller would have been led to 
embrace it, to take upon him the name that was no longer a 
badge of disgrace, but had become a claim to preferment. In 
Csesarea the case is different. It was, it is true, a large city, and 
would have had at least some public scribes. But we must 
remember that we have positive knowledge of Christian scholar- 
ship here. Caesarea had long been a centre of interest for 
Christian theologians, and had about a century before sheltered 
the great Origen within its walls. He received there his ordina- 
tion as presbyter, and when the fanatical Bishop of Alexandria 
attacked him, he settled in Csesarea and gathered many pupils 
around him. These Christians had a large library there, and we 
have in various manuscripts references to books in that library. 
Putting these things together, it seems fair to suppose that 
Eusebius had in his town Christian scholars at command, and 
Christian scribes, to write the fifty sacred volumes. Should any 
one say that the size of the probable school and the cultivation 
of the Christians there probably rendered the work of these 
Christian scribes a thoroughly well-appointed and business-like 
institution, not very different from and not inferior to the 
establishments of profane booksellers, I shall at once concede 
the point. If I am not mistaken, that is precisely the reason 
why Constantine ordered the books for his proud capital in that 



36 THE CANON 

distant town in Palestine. He had doubtless made inquiries, 
and had learned that Eusebius not only had in the library of his 
deceased bosom friend Pamphilos, whose name he had added to 
his own, the finest known copies, the most accurately written 
copies, of the Bible, but that he also had at his command in his 
neighbourhood, and probably within the precincts of his episcopal 
residence, of the houses and grounds attached to his own palace, 
the best scribes that were to be found in all that region. If 
these surmises come near to the truth, that large book order on 
the part of the emperor is likely to have made that scriptorial 
establishment, that book-house, still more celebrated, and to have 
led to other orders of a less imposing extent. That is, so far as 
I can recall, the only case in early times in which we hear so 
directly about the making of Christian books, and therefore, to 
return to our point respecting the matter in general, we can only 
say that we have no knowledge of any business man, of any 
bookseller who occupied himself especially with making Bibles 
or New Testaments or single books out of the New Testament. 
Perhaps some scholar will one day find in an old manuscript new 
information on this subject. 

Whatever may have been the real facts in earlier days, 
however near our guesses may come to the true state of the case, 
we know certainly that at a later date the copying of the books 
of the New Testament was a part of the work of ecclesiastics and 
of monks. Of the many, many volumes which contain a de- 
scription of the position of the scribe who copied them, by far 
the larger number were from the classes named. In a great 
number of manuscripts the scribe is said to be just upon the 
point of becoming a monk. This remark is found so often that 
I am inclined to think that frequently it must have been the rule 
for a novice who was at the end of his probation and was 
approaching his tonsure as monk, to copy a part of the Bible, 
certain books of the New Testament, as a token of his proficiency 
in external letters and of his devotion to the sacred volume. 



E. What we Seek. 

Setting aside for the moment our preliminary considerations 
touching the existence of a canon, it is pertinent at this point 



INTRODUCTION— E. WHAT WE SEEK 37 

to try to define in detail what we must seek for. We are about 
to enter upon the field of early Christian history. What do we 
wish to look for in this field? We are not concerned now to 
examine the piety of the members of the various rising Christian 
societies. We are not going to ask in what rooms they held 
their meetings. We are not intending to find out how they 
appointed their leaders. All these things, and a great many 
other things in themselves equally weighty and interesting, must 
now remain untouched. Three objects call for our attention. 

We must in applying ourselves to a view of the early Church, 
inquire for traces of the existence of the books that we have 
in our New Testament to-day. It is the existence that is first 
to be sought for, some sign that the given book is, and if possible 
that it is at a given place. In advance an ignorant man might 
take it for granted that no book could possibly be used by the 
Church without having been previously or at the time in question 
made the object of a rigid examination, and without a minute 
having been entered into the documents of the Church with 
regard to the said book. But the Christians of that day were 
not so critically inclined as that would indicate. At the very 
first there are no tokens of anything of that kind. In con- 
sequence we must be content with less clear evidence. We 
must search in the literature of the Church — we should search 
just as eagerly in profane literature if there were anything to be 
found in it — for signs that these books have been used even 
without their having been alluded to by name. A later treatise 
might show or seem to show by the things spoken of in it that 
the author of it had read some book now in the New Testament. 
He might lean towards or lean upon the material given in it. 
In some cases it might be possible to show by his style that 
he had used the said book. It is unnecessary to press the 
warning not to judge too hastily in a matter like this. The 
differences between use and non-use are sometimes extremely 
hard to be detected. A second stage in this inquiry after the 
existence of the books is the search for quotations from them, 
quotations giving their very words but not mentioning their 
names. Here the thing seems to be and really is much clearer. 
Yet even here great caution is needed, since sentences some- 
times appear to be similar to each other or practically identical, 
which prove on closer examination to have no direct connection 



38 THE CANON 

with each other. The words may be from a third, a previous 
writing, or they may be a saying that was long current in various 
circles before the words with which we compare them were 
written. The third and satisfactory stage of the search after 
proofs of the existence of the books, is the search for direct 
mention of the books by name. A mention by name, particularly 
if it be accompanied by a clear quotation from the text of the 
book, is the best evidence that we can ask for. Of course, we 
should be on our guard lest the name should be an interpolation 
by a later writer who had been led or misled by the real or only 
apparent quotation. It is plain that these three stages in the 
inquiry for tokens of the existence of the books are not to be 
conceived of as only possible of separate consecutive examination, 
looking in each single book first for the one and then for the 
other stage. In taking up a later book we may find first of 
all the third and highest stage of the evidence. We should, 
however, in spite of that examine the whole document, seeking 
as well for the other two less important stages as corroborative 
evidence. 

The second object for attention, proved or conceded the 
existence of the books, is the search for signs of an especial 
valuation of these books on the part of Christians, and, if that 
may be distinguished, on the part of authorised or authoritative 
Christians, men of a certain eminence. Here we may place five 
kinds of evidence before our minds. The first kind would be 
the discovery that these books of the New Testament or that 
any one of them is in literary use preferred to other books not 
in our New Testament. We might find, for example, that they 
in case of quotation were particularly emphasised, that they 
were more frequently mentioned and treated with greater respect 
than other books, that thev were spoken of as if they might 
claim for themselves a special authority. Here we are again, 
as we were at the first stage of the previous inquiry, looking for 
something that may perhaps sometimes be rather felt than 
directly seen, may lie in a turn of a sentence and not in a direct 
statement. The second kind of evidence is that which in some 
way shows that these books were settled upon as worthy of, or 
were designated directly for, being read by Christians in private 
life for their instruction, for their edification, or for their comfort 
and consolation. The third kind of evidence is that which 



INTRODUCTION— £. WHAT WE SEEK 39 

proves their designation for public use in church. The weight 
of the evidence for this point must be characterised more closely. 
The difference between books for private reading and those for 
public use will be plain by a moment's comparison with books 
of to-day. To take an extreme example, it would be quite 
conceivable that a clergyman should recommend to a parishioner 
to read a certain novel of a specifically Christian tendency ; it 
would not be conceivable that he should read this novel before 
the congregation. There is nothing double-tongued or hypo- 
critical in this. The clergyman knows, on the one hand, that 
the person advised is capable of judging aright of the contents 
of the book, whilst he could not know who might hear and 
misunderstand it in the public assembly. But, on the other 
hand, he also knows that the Church by ancient custom admits 
no such literature to a place in the services. The fourth kind 
of evidence is that which places these books upon the same level 
as the books of the Old Testament. The importance of this 
point is clear. The books of the Old Testament — we are not 
able to say precisely which ones book for book — were accepted 
by the early Christians as in a peculiar way given by God to 
the Jews and through them to the Church. They were accepted 
as the one authoritative collection of documents revealing to 
men the mind of God. It must here be expressly stated that 
we have not the least indication that the early Christians were 
in any way inclined to inquire closely into the origin and authority 
of the religious books in their hands. Their attitude towards 
certain books not a part of the Old Testament proper goes to 
show either that the Old Testament was then scarcely clearly 
defined in its third division, or that the Christians freely used 
other books as equal to those in that third division. But this 
concession does not in the least alter the value of the point we 
have now in view. It is for us of the greatest moment if we 
can show that, or when we can show that, a book was considered 
as on a par with the books of the Old Testament. The fifth 
and last kind of evidence is that which directly calls these books 
canonical or declared them to be among the number of the 
canonised books. Just what that may mean is a topic for later 
consideration after we have reached that point. 

At the first glance it might seem as if that were all that we 
had to do, as if no further steps were necessary to place the 



40 THE CANON 

books of the New Testament upon their proper and firm basis 
of clear history, always supposing that we succeeded in finding 
the best of the evidences just described. But this is not all. 
If we stopped at this point the favorers and furtherers of what 
they call " the New Testament outside of the received canon " 
might come to us and claim that these books were in possession 
of precisely the same evidence as that which we have discovered 
in the case of the New Testament books. Now we have indeed 
said at the outset that the books just referred to have no proper 
place in New Testament introduction, and that still holds good. 
But it is in no way possible to avoid an inquiry calculated directly 
either to confirm or to annul the claim of these other writings 
to be a part of the New Testament. This leads, then, to the 
third object that claims our attention. We have sought after 
signs of a special valuation of the books of the New Testament. 
Are signs of such, of an equal, valuation to be found for any 
other writings belonging to the early period of Christianity? 
And if tokens of certain such signs can be pointed out for other 
writings, have we other evidence, tokens of an opposite character 
which force the conclusion that these writings are nevertheless 
finally not to be considered as equal in authority to those of the 
New Testament ? Here we have to ask about other books, then, 
the same questions as before, touching the way in which they 
are quoted, whether they are named for private reading or for 
public services, and whether they are placed in conjunction with 
the Old Testament. Should we find that some of the ques- 
tions must be answered in the affirmative, we must then inquire 
whether the given books were in any way thereafter so treated 
as to show that these previous signs were not of a general 
and authoritative value. We may find that they were definitely 
distinguished by official statement from the books of the New 
Testament. The fact that they must be thus put aside places 
clearly before our eyes how very near they must have been to 
the New Testament. No one would need to say that Homer 
was not a part of the New Testament. We may find that they 
are termed apocryphal. That word was originally one of respect. 
It pointed to a book containing a secret doctrine but a lofty 
one, a matter that was too hard, too deep, too high for the 
common run of men, something that was only adapted to the 
initiated. As time went on the Christians came to a clearer 



INTRODUCTION— £. WHAT WE SEEK 41 

vision, and formed the opinion that these books, supposed to be 
so peculiarly valuable, were in reality much less valuable than 
the books of the Church that were not apocryphal. Therefore 
they used the word apocryphal at that later day as a term for 
books that were not what they purported to be, were not genuine, 
were not in the least as good as the publicly known and used 
writings. It will be our duty to examine the case carefully, and 
to decide whether or not we can approve of what they did. 

These three inquiries exhaust in general our task in regard 
to the early ages of the Church. In pursuit of them we must 
endeavour as far as possible to distinguish between different 
times and as well between different places. Four warnings may 
be useful. The first is that we must strive not to mistake the 
nature of the given section of history and confuse earlier con- 
ditions with those of a later date. Imagine anyone's supposing 
that Schopenhauer's writings were as eagerly read and as much 
the object of public approval in the year 1819, when his great 
work was issued, as they became towards the year i860, after 
Frauenstadt had urged them upon public notice. The second 
is that we must not let earlier conditions be made doubtful and 
less clear by statements made about them at a later date. Our 
means of judging of a period rtmoved from the vision of an 
ancient writer are often better than his. The third warning 
prevents our incautiously making the conditions and circum- 
stances in one country a certain measure for the conditions and 
circumstances in other countries. What is true of Egypt at a 
given time need not be true of Italy at the same time. Conceive 
of a writer in the future who should presuppose, in drawing 
historical conclusions, that the internal conditions in Spain 
were the same as those in Germany in the year 1907, that the 
workmen were equally intelligent and equally successful in 
securing their rights, and that the upper classes were equally 
free from the domination of the Roman Catholic clergy. The 
fourth draws a similar line within much narrower limits, and 
forbids us to suppose that the circumstances in out of the 
way places and districts are the same as in the large cities. For 
all our post-offices and telegraph, this remains largely true even 
to-day. There are small towns, sometimes curiously enough 
quite near to large cities, that preserve to-day many of their old 
characteristics. Such differences were in ancient times in the 



42 THE CANON 

lands that we have in view often extremely great. There was 
often a gulf of race and speech, and therefore of character, 
education, and customs, fixed between the city and the villages 
around it. 

If that is the course before us for the earlier ages, in which 
by far the greater part of our task has to be performed, the later 
periods will demand of us an account of the varying or unvarying 
consistency with which they keep to or depart from the decisions 
of their predecessors. It will perhaps sometimes be necessary 
for us to ask whether given nations or societies have from the 
first held to that which they at the present suppose that they 
have ever believed and cherished. 






43 



I. 

THE APOSTOLIC AGE, 
33-90 (100). 

When we approach the age of the apostles we must lay aside 
for the moment modern ways of thinking, and strive to put 
ourselves beside the first Christians as they went in and out of 
the temple and Jerusalem and Nazareth and Capernaum. It is 
hard for us to reduce ourselves to the simplicity of the time, of 
the places, of the country, of the circumstances in which this 
little but growing society found itself. For us, that was all the 
enthusiastic opening of the movement that was later to fill and 
possess the world of that day. For them, for those incipient 
Christians, there was, it is true, a certain outlook of a coming 
glory. But the death of their leader and the doubt and hesita- 
tion, the little faith of many of the brethren dampened and 
clogged the flight of their thoughts. The glad thought of the 
trumpet sounding at midnight the return of their Jesus, a return 
upon the clouds of light in the majesty of a king by the grace 
of God, a return that would herald them to the rest of the world 
as the favourites and confidential friends of this universal 
sovereign, — this glad thought must before the lapse of many 
years have given place to a quiet resignation, or at most to a 
modest and longing wishfulness. Like the Thessalonians, they 
saw one and another of their number recede into the darkness 
of the tomb, though all of them were men who had counted upon 
the open vision of that triumphant entry. They had thought 
that they had a draft on sight, not one payable in two thousand 
or ten thousand years. They were simple-minded people. What 
did they think about the writings of the New Testament when 
they were placed before their eyes? Let us consider the 
case. 

We regard the word as of preeminent importance. We have 



44 THE CANON 

not heard Jesus speak. Nor do we know anyone who has 
heard Him. Neither our fathers nor our grandfathers wandered 
with Him over the hills of Galilee. For us the written word is of 
great weight ; and of right, for it is beyond price. But there is 
something still more important than the written word. Did we 
wish, as some people unfortunately often do, to limit the sayings 
and the deeds, the events in those years of the Church's infancy, 
to what we find written down in the New Testament, as if it 
were a precise chronicle of all that the Christians experienced, 
we should go astray. And we should err still more widely if we 
refused to accept any testimony as to the written word in the 
New Testament which we cannot read in so many sentences in 
ecclesiastical authors. The Christian Church is more than a 
book. Jesus was more than a word. Jesus, the Logos, the 
Word, was the Life, and the Church is a living society, a living 
fellowship. There is something sublime in such a fellowship that 
passes through the ages in a living tradition. Our connection 
with Jesus, which reaches now over more than eighteen hundred 
years, does not rest upon the fact that He wrote something down, 
which one man and another, one after another has read and 
believed until this very day. So far as we know, He left no 
writings, no notes behind Him. We do not read that He ever 
told anyone to take down His words so as to give them to others 
in white and black. We are not told that He ever wrote or 
dictated even a letter. He lived and He spoke. Christianity 
began with the joining of heart to heart. Eye looked into eye. 
The living voice struck upon the living ear. And it is precisely 
such a uniting of personalities, such an action of man on man, 
that ever since Jesus spoke has effected the unceasing renewal of 
Christianity. Christianity has not grown to be what it is, has 
not maintained itself and enlarged itself, by reason of books 
being read, no, not even by reason of the Bible's being read 
from generation to generation. How many millions of the 
Christians of past days could not read ! How many to-day 
cannot read ! Christianity is first of all a life and has - been 
passed along as life, has been lived, livingly presented from age 
to age. The Christian, whether a clergyman or a layman, has 
sought with his heart after the hearts of his fellow-men. A 
mother has whispered the word to her child, a friend has spoken 
it in the ear of his friend, a preacher has proclaimed it to his 



THE APOSTOLIC AGE 45 

hearers, and the child, the friend, the hearers have believed and 
become Christians. Christianity is an uninterrupted life. 

These considerations have certain practical consequences for 
the inquiries in the criticism of the canon. It is certain that the 
leaders of the Church, the more prominent men particularly in 
the earliest ages, wrote very few books. Our researches will 
probably show us that most of the books of the New Testament 
were written at an early date. But it is not in the least to be 
reasonably presupposed or expected that the Christians in the 
years that immediately followed spent their time in writing books 
that should convey to us what we wish to know about the 
criticism of the canon. It was a period of tradition by word of 
mouth. It was not tradition by book and eye, but tradition by 
mouth and ear, that occupied the minds of those Christians in 
their unresting, untiring efforts to spread the words of Jesus and 
the story of His work. We sometimes hear complaints about the 
scantiness of the literature that has been preserved to us, that 
are uttered as if those early days of the Church had been days of 
prolific literary activity, as if an exuberant literature had existed 
which has been lost. Nothing of the kind was, so far as we can 
see, the case. On the contrary, but little in comparison was 
written. But this circumstance — and that is the point of these 
remarks — cannot be turned into a good reason for doubting the 
existence and use of the books of the New Testament at that 
time. It was a time of busy proclamation of the gospel, and a 
time at which the near end — in spite of all disappointed hopes — 
was still looked for. Literary events, literary processes, literary 
activity were far from their thoughts. The members of the 
Christian Churches, of the little circles that were here and there 
linking themselves together in the bond of fellowship, were to a 
great extent poor and uneducated. The larger part of the first 
Christians were neither in a position to buy nor able to read 
books. They were in the habit of hearing, not of reading, news 
that was of interest to them. They had no newspapers to allure 
them from their unlettered state. 

The Christians were, however, not all ill-educated. Their 
leaders will doubtless in most cases have been able to read and 
write. It might be supposed then that these leaders were eager 
furtherers of Christian literary effort. We have no indications 
that that was the case, and a little reflection, combined with what 



46 THE CANON 

has been already said about the making known of the good 
tidings, will I think, lead to the conclusion that books and 
'.iterature were among the things farthest from their thoughts. 
For we must not forget that these leaders were not trained 
officials, not even trained as officials in general, let alone literature. 
They had not been recruited from the number of the head men 
of the Jews. They were taken from the rank and file. And in 
especial they were not scribes and lawyers, not used to dealing 
day by day with books, with the Jewish book of books, the Law. 
If they could read a passage in the synagogue and say a few 
words about it, that would be the utmost that could be required 
or asked of them. 

Just at this point, having reminded ourselves of the fact that 
neither the common run of Christians nor those who had by age 
or social standing or some personal quality been placed in a 
position of a certain trifling authority had any special literary 
inclinations, it will be pertinent to reflect for an instant upon the 
uncritical disposition of the age. This was not a peculiarly 
Christian failing. Men such as those we have just glanced at 
could not be expected to examine cautiously and precisely every 
grain of evidence for books presented for Christian use. It 
would be very strange if they thought of such a thing, But the 
whole world of that day was credulous to a high degree. Clement 
of Rome, and even Tacitus in a way, appear to have half-believed 
the myth of the phoenix, and the majority of the people were 
ready to believe the most improbable stories. I have spoken of 
that age as being credulous. I might have said that all men, 
with very few exceptions, are credulous. Men are credulous to- 
day. People of birth and education go to inane but cunning 
spiritists and fortune-tellers. And the poor of all countries 
devour eagerly the wildest fancies of a lying messenger. To 
return : the age with which we have to deal and the persons with 
whom we have especially to do was not and were not critically 
inclined. We must keep this in mind when we reflect upon 
their acceptance and approval of writings that may happen to 
have been offered for their consideration. 

If anyone had asked a Palestinian Jewish Christian in the 
year, let us say, 35 in what language a book meant for the use of 
Christians should be written, I have little doubt that he would 
have replied : "In Aramaic," although he might have called it 



THE APOSTOLIC AGE 47 

Hebrew or Syriac in a slovenly way of speaking. The sacred 
books were indeed in good Hebrew, we might call it classical ; 
and if the man questioned should have entertained the thought 
that the books referred to should be equivalent to the books of 
the Old Testament, he would, of course, have replied that they 
must be in classical Hebrew. Even to-day in Arabic-speaking 
countries the Arabic Christians wish the Scriptures read to them 
and the sermons preached to them to be in classical Arabic, 
even though the sermons, in fact, fall far short of any due classical 
standards. The Western scholars who sometimes are surprised 
by this fact and demur at it, should reflect that a Billingsgate 
fishwoman, a London omnibus-driver, a Berlin cab-driver, and a 
New York street arab would all alike be surprised, and I scarcely 
think pleased, to hear the Scriptures read and sermons preached 
in the jargon that they daily use. The Aramaic which Jesus 
spoke was not from the east, not a product in Palestine of the 
return from the exile in Babylon, but from the north, an im- 
portation made probably during the first half of the second 
century before Christ. It is likely that the same answer would 
have been given by some Christians even at a later date. 
Nevertheless we have every reason to believe that a large 
number of the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine understood and 
spoke Greek long before the time of Christ. The Aramaic 
population was encircled by and, if the expression be not contra- 
dictory, at least sparsely permeated by Greek-speaking inhabitants. 
The seacoast was chiefly Greek. Joppa, now Jaffa, where the 
Jews of the south touched the coast, was the scene of the Greek 
myth of Perseus and Andromeda. Csesarea was Greek. Ptolemais 
or Akka was, like several cities on the other, the eastern side of 
Palestine, a Hellenistic city, and they all had been in existence 
for centuries. As for literature, Ascalon produced four Stoic 
philosophers. The Epicurean Philodemus was from Gadara, and 
so was the Cynic Menippos. Civil officials and military officers 
were stationed here and there. Heathen plays were well known, 
there being a theatre and amphitheatre at Jerusalem, a theatre, 
an amphitheatre, and a hippodrome at Jericho, a stadium at 
Tiberias, and a hippodrome at Taricheae, the Pickelries. Add 
to that the movements of Greek-speaking traders and workmen. 
Consider, further, the proselytes, the synagogues of the Libertines, 
the Cyreneans, the Alexandrians, and the Cilicians named in 



48 THE CANON 

Acts. From all this hasty glimpse we see that Greek must have 
been in Palestine a very well-known language. The effect of the 
Greek elements, just alluded to, upon the Aramaic-speaking 
population can only be duly appreciated by taking into view the 
small extent of the country and the resultant compulsion the 
Arameans were under to meet and deal with Greeks. From 
Jericho to Joppa itself was not two days for a fast traveller. It 
is interesting to observe that the military governor, the colonel, 
in the twenty-first and twenty-second chapters of Acts, is surprised 
to find that Paul, whom he had taken for a wild Egyptian, can 
speak Greek, while in a reverse direction it is clear that the mob 
is surprised to hear him speak Aramaic. The interesting thing 
is that the mob had evidently expected to understand him, even 
if he had spoken Greek. So soon as Christianity began to 
address itself to the Greek-speaking Jews outside of Palestine, 
the first thought of any author of a letter or of a book designed 
for general circulation will have been to write it in Greek. For 
that language would reach almost all Jews, even in Palestine, 
saving a certain part of the poorer classes. 

The Jews who heard Jesus and believed on Him, will at the 
first moment not have dreamed of the production of a literature, of 
a series of books for their own particular use and benefit. Then 
and long after that, probably so long as the temple continued to 
stand, they remained good Jews and did their duty, observed the 
rites due from them as Jews. If anyone had asked after their 
sacred books they would have pointed to the Old Testament 
without a thought that anything more could be desired. They 
had heard Jesus. They continued to be Jews in union with 
Jesus. They were fully satisfied with the Scriptures which they 
possessed. No one had asked Jesus to write a continuation of 
the Old Testament. What could be desired? Should a new 
law be drawn up ? Jesus had declared that the old law should 
outlast the heavens. Should a new prophetical book be added ? 
Jesus had announced the close of the prophecy : " until John." 
As time passed by there came, however, two literary movements, 
one in gathering at least fragments of the words of Jesus, the 
other in the supplying of certain needs of the Christians by 
means of letters from the apostles or other Christian leaders; 
but neither of these movements had at the first moment a 
trace of an intention to continue, to complete, or to supplement 



THE APOSTOLIC AGE 49 

the sacred books of the Jews which were also the sacred books 
of the Christians. The earliest Christian authors did not for an 
instant suppose that they were writing sacred books. 

If we go back in thought to these years in which the Christians 
are gradually growing more and more numerous, in which the 
many who had been in Jerusalem at that great Whitsunday were 
being multiplied not only in Palestine but also far and wide 
throughout the Roman Empire, we must be cautious in assuming 
for them too large a number of* adherents at the first moment. 
Eastern people are poor counters, and easily exceed the facts with 
their tens and hundreds and thousands. The Churches were 
small gatherings, chiefly of not very well educated men and 
women. These Churches were not on the lookout for books. 
They had among them men who had seen and heard Jesus, or at 
least His apostles, the Twelve. Some of the Churches really had 
members of the inner circle, of those Twelve, among them It 
could not be otherwise, for the Twelve neither died nor were killed 
all at once at the time of the death of Stephen. Even at the 
time at which Paul wrote the First Epistle to the Corinthians — and 
that was probably in the year 53 — it is clear that no Gospels were 
known to him. He says in that letter (1 Cor. 15 3 ), speaking of 
his preaching, that he had passed on to the Corinthians, when he 
first went among them, that which he had received, namely, that 
Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and so on. He 
does not say that he had read this, but that he had received it and 
that is here that he had heard it. Ananias and others had told 
him about it. As little does he tell them to take up the Gospels 
in their hands and see for themselves whether his doctrine agrees 
with the books. It seems to me that this altogether does away 
with the opinion formed by some, that Paul spent his time in 
Damascus and Arabia immediately after his conversion in reading 
a Gospel written by Matthew. We have, then, no reason to 
suppose that Paul or the Corinthians, and therefore as little to 
suppose that Peter or the Christians at Jerusalem and Antioch, 
had in the year 53 Gospels before them. It would, however, be 
quite possible that somewhere about that time one and another 
Christian had begun to think of using his pen in a limited way. 

Before inquiring what these possible writers probably would 
have written, I must touch upon one other matter, which I prefer 
to mention here, instead of giving it in connection with the Jewish 
4 



50 THE CANON 

canon, because it will throw light upon the circumstances of the 
earlier Christian societies. We saw above that the Jews had 
sacred writings in three parts — Law, Prophets, Writings. It is, I 
think, important to emphasise the fact that we are by no means 
authorised to suppose that every Jewish synagogue had all the 
books of all three of these parts, of course in the third part all 
the books that at any given time belonged to this part. It is very 
easy to-day to buy an Old Testament and a New Testament and 
both may be in one volume. At that day the whole of the Old 
Testament filled several rolls of different sizes, and I feel sure 
that many a village synagogue will have been glad of the possession 
of the Law and the Prophets, and have not been able to buy all 
the other rolls. The Psalms they will probably have had. Even 
if anyone should hesitate to agree with me on this point in respect 
to the smaller Jewish synagogues, I think no one will fail to con- 
cede, that when we turn to the few Christians who at the first 
here and there separated themselves as Christians, for the purpose 
of having Christian worship, from the synagogues in their town 
or village, we must not think of them as able to have the Law, 
the Prophets, and the Writings. I say separated, it would perhaps 
be better for at least many places to say : were forced to leave 
the synagogues. In time the little circle will have succeeded in 
getting at least certain parts of the Old Testament for liturgical 
purposes, but it may often have been a long while before that 
was possible. Where they were still allowed to go to the 
synagogue they will still have continued to go to it on Saturday, 
on the Sabbath, and then have had their own special Christian 
services on the Lord's Day, on Sunday. It was this that led, I 
suppose, in the early Church, and I doubt not at an exceedingly 
early date, to Christian services on Saturday or the Sabbath, — we 
must quit the pernicious habit of calling the Lord's Day by the 
Jewish name for Saturday, — services that were only secondary to 
the Sunday services. It was this that led to the determination 
not only of Sunday but also of Sabbath Gospel lessons, and the 
two series are still to be found in the lesson books of the older 
Churches. To return to our point, the early Christian societies 
will often not have had all the books of the Old Testament at 
their command, and will therefore have had still less inclination 
to look beyond that for new books. What they heard about 
Jesus they heard from the living voice of the wandering preachers 



THE APOSTOLIC AGE 5 1 

who were called apostles, and that was fresh, varied, interesting, 
something quite different from the rolls of the synagogue. It is 
a strange thought for us : Christians who had no written Gospels. 
To think that Paul the great apostle probably never saw a written 
Gospel ! He had heard the gospel, not read it ; heard it from 
Christians in Damascus, seen it in heavenly visions, not read it. 
What a preacher he must have been for all his weakness ! But 
he had not a sign of a commentary out of which to draw his 
sermons, much less ready-made skeletons of sermons, and not 
even a written text. 

The words of Jesus and the story of Jesus' work were then 
the great thing. That was what men cared to hear. And when 
a Christian sharpened his reed pen and dipped it in the ink and 
began to write on a piece of papyrus, he probably first wrote down 
some of the words of Jesus. What would the curiosity-mongers 
give for that pen and for that first piece of papyrus with the first 
words of Jesus that were written down for future reading ? One 
Christian may have written down a parable which had especially 
pleased him. Another will have told with his pen of a miracle of 
Jesus. Another may have let his memory and his pen dwell 
upon a journey made with Jesus, from Nazareth to Tiberias, 
from Jerusalem to Jericho. Later other parables, miracles, and 
journeys will have been added. More than one such frail and 
fleeting little papyrus roll will have been written upon, of many 
of which we have never heard a word and of which we shall never 
see a line. Some wrote in Aramaic, probably the most of them 
at the first, for the most of the hearers of Jesus will have been 
Arameans. Is it not strange that the Twelve did not write down 
the words of Jesus ? But perhaps they did without our hearing 
of it. It is likely that one of them in particular wrote quite a 
book. That was Matthew. We shall hear more about it later. 
He doubtless wrote a book that contained a great many of Jesus' 
words, and told in between in scattered sentences what Jesus did 
as He went about Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom. 

It was probably Paul who first wrote one of the longer books 
of the New Testament. But he did not begin with the very 
largest. We do not know when he began to write, and we do not 
know whether we have his first writings or not. One thing we 
are sure of — we have not all that he wrote. He began by trying 
to comfort and reassure the Christians in the little Church at 



52 THE CANON 

Thessalonica, perhaps in the year 48. And then he wrote to the 
Corinthians in the year it may be 53, and then to the Romans it 
may be in the year 54, and then to the Galatians, and so on. It 
is not entirely beyond the pale of possibility that Peter and that 
James the brother of Jesus wrote such a letter before Paul wrote 
to the Thessalonians. So far as we can judge from the very little 
that the books of the New Testament tell us about Paul, he 
stopped preaching and stopped writing letters and went to heaven 
about the year 64, and that book of Matthew that was referred 
to above may easily have been written somewhere about that 
time. 

Matthew's Aramaic book, or the Aramaic book about Jesus in 
Galilee, whether Matthew wrote it or not, must before more than 
a year or two had passed, perhaps before more than a month or 
two had passed, have been translated into Greek. Now that the 
book was before the Christians' eyes, they will have wondered 
that no one had thought to write it at an earlier day. That book 
did not tell about the passion. The passion did not belong to 
Galilee. Before long it became clear that the Christians needed 
a more complete account of the words and deeds of Jesus. This 
need John Mark the Jerusalemite, the cousin of Barnabas, the 
friend of Paul and of Peter, seems to have felt and tried to supply 
in our second Gospel, written perhaps about the year 69. Some- 
one else, we have not the most remote idea who it may have been, 
took up the story a few years later and wrote our first Gospel. 
Still later Luke wrote the third Gospel and the book of Acts. It 
was not till nearly the end of the century that the Fourth Gospel 
appeared. 

We are at the close of the apostolic age. We see the 
numerous little Churches, that is to say, companies of Christians, 
scattered over the Roman Empire, meeting from week to week 
in private houses and exhorting one another to a firm faith, a 
good life, and a living hope. A number of books have been 
written that these Christians find particularly valuable. Part of 
them look a little like histories, part of them are simply letters, one 
of them is a book of dreams. But for all these writings the thing 
which holds the attention of the Christian Churches is still the 
living word, the weekly sermon, if the given Church be so for- 
tunate as to have a preacher every week. 

So far as we can see, there is as yet no collection of Christian 



THE APOSTOLIC AGE 53 

books. That must soon come. We have nearly closed the first 
century. The apostolic age laps over on to the post-apostolic 
age. It closes about the year 100, but the post-apostolic age 
begins about the year 90. The reason for this double boundary 
lies in the wish to include in the former age the Fourth Gospel and 
in the latter age the letter of the Church at Rome to the Church 
at Corinth, the letter called Clement's of Rome. 

Paul wrote to the Thessalonians in his second letter, 2 Thess. 
2 15 , that they should stand firm, and that they should hold fast 
to the traditions that they had been taught either by word of 
mouth or by a letter from him. That was the signature of the 
early age of the Church. It will still follow us into the second 
period. But a new principle is preparing, or the foundation is 
being laid for a new principle, that will recognise a crystallisation 
of the traditions. The enthusiasm of the simple Christian 
brethren of the first years is to fade into a cool and steady service 
under a new law and a new hierarchy. The living voice of the 
preacher, of the apostle hastening from place to place, is to give 
way to the words read from a written page and to uncertain 
comments thereupon. 

Between the years in which the first books of the New 
Testament were written and the close of the apostolic period 
about a half a century had elapsed, which would be for us as far 
as from i860 to to-day. During that time the books of the New 
Testament were probably most of them written. Before we leave 
this age, we should ask whether we can find any signs of what 
might be called self-consciousness in these writings of the New 
Testament. That is to say, we know of, or suspect the existence 
of but one book, outside of the books of the New Testament, that 
was probably or possibly written during this period. And there- 
fore when we ask if there are any signs at this time of the exist- 
ence of these books, it amounts to much the same as asking 
whether these books give any tokens of noticing their own exist- 
ence, any tokens of a knowledge of any Christian literature. The 
passage already alluded to, in which Paul refers to the traditions 
which the Thessalonians received by word or from his letter, is 
scarcely more than a shadow of self-consciousness of these 
writings, since he there is speaking so thoroughly practically, and 
not in the least claiming book value and permanent value for his 
letter. But the phrase, the sentence, is nevertheless well worth 



54 • THE CANON 

remark, for in fact there lies at the back of this command to them 
the thought that what he has written to them is normative or that 
his letter is normative. The opening of the third chapter of the 
Second Epistle of Peter with its reference to the First Epistle and 
to the command of the apostles, and then the words about Paul 
and his Epistles, I pass over here because I do not think that this 
Epistle belongs to this age. Luke at the beginning of his Gospel 
mentions many other attempts at Gospels. That may refer in part 
to various private attempts such as we have already spoken of. 
It undoubtedly refers, if I mistake not, to the book of Matthew, 
the Aramaic one that was translated into Greek, and also to the 
Gospel of Mark, and it is possible although not very likely that it 
has in view, only by hearsay, our Gospel according to Matthew 
and the Gospel to the Hebrews. In no case is the word " many " 
here to be taken in the sense of a very large number, so that we 
should think of twenty or fifty Gospels. Many means more or 
less according to the thing spoken of, and here a half a dozen 
would be an abundant number. The one book mentioned a 
moment ago as possibly belonging to this period but not found 
in the New Testament is the Gospel of the Hebrews or to the 
Hebrews. We know, however, very little about it. It may very 
well be that Aramaic book by Matthew, in which case it is in the 
main or perhaps entirely to be found in our synoptic Gospels. It 
may be something quite different. It will probably come to light 
some day in Egypt or in Armenia or in Syria, and then we shall 
know more about it 



55 



II. 

THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE. 

90-160. 

In passing over to the age after that of the apostles, we need 
first of all to form for ourselves some conception of the way in 
which the Christians looked at the books which they found in 
their hands. We are interested to know, or at least to try to 
fancy, what they thought of them and why they kept them. It 
has been to such an extent the habit in the Christian Church to 
throw a cloud of glory about these books, that it is difficult to 
bring our minds down to what it is likely were the hard facts of 
the case. The guidance and care of the Holy Spirit has been 
emphasised so strongly that we must needs suppose that each 
book was from its day of writing definitely marked as a future 
member of the illustrious company, and was most scrupulously, 
we might say masoretically, guarded and transmitted to our day. 
We know, however, now that this has not been the course of 
things. If we turn back to the early days, we may dalmly say 
that it is in every way probable that one or another letter of the 
apostles, that would humanly speaking have, or seem to have, 
afforded us as much instruction, comfort, and help as certain 
Epistles in the New Testament, has simply been lost. The early 
Christians had no thought of history, no thought of an earthly 
future. They were soon to cut loose from all their surroundings. 
Why should they then save up books, or rather save up letters. 
They had read and heard the given letter. That was all. They 
knew what was in it. No more was needed. Why keep the 
letter ? Precisely the opposite may now and then have happened, 
namely that a little Church read a letter to pieces ; unrolled the 
papyrus and rolled it up again until it fell apart, and that with- 
out setting about copying it so as to keep it in a new form. The 
letters that the apostles wrote to them were not " Bible." They 



56 THE CANON 

were the letters of their favourite preachers. Some members of 
the Church were enthusiastic about the apostle, others were not, 
others liked another apostle or another preacher very much 
better. The very man in the little community who because of 
his better education came to have charge of a letter received 
might be a friend of some other preacher, and therefore neglect 
the letter of an apostle. In the case of the Epistles which we 
still possess, some were surely kept with the greatest care, read 
duly by the members of the Church, read in occasional meetings, 
lent to neighbouring Churches, copied off for distant Churches, 
and copied off for themselves as soon as they began to grow 
old and were threatened with decay. No one will have 
given a thought to the original the moment that a new copy was 
done. 

The Gospels were different. They were not sent to Churches 
or to anybody else. No one got one unless he ordered it. And 
they did not convey to the reader merely the words of an 
apostle, but the words and deeds of Jesus. During the apostolic 
age there will not have been so very many copies of the 
Gospels made. For the Churches were poor, and books from 
which to copy may not have been anywhere near. Most of 
all, they then had the wandering preachers who told them 
about Jesus, and therefore the written Gospels were the less 
necessary. 

Certainly, however, these writings came to be read in the 
public meetings. The word public has for this primitive time, it 
is true, a strange sense, since the groups were often so very small, 
and were always in private houses; but it was nevertheless, 
within the limits of the case and as the forerunner of the later 
services in Church edifices, a public reading, not the reading of 
one man for himself or for his room mate or for his family, but 
the reading of a book before a duly collected group of men and 
women. We must consider carefully this early reading of books 
in the Christian assemblies. If I am not mistaken, we shall in it 
see the process of authorisation of books from the first to the 
last step. 

Going back to the beginning, to the first time that a letter 
from an apostle, let us say Paul, was received by a Church, let us 
say Thessalonica, we can imagine the stir it will have made. The 
little group will have been complete ; no one will have stayed at 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— SCRIPTURE IN CHURCH 57 

home that evening. The letter was eagerly read and eagerly 
heard, and then they probably talked it over with each other. 
They perhaps read it again the next night and the next. The 
Church at Bercea and other Churches, possibly as far as Philippi, 
may have borrowed it or asked for copies of it, although we do 
not suppose that at this early moment the borrowing and copying 
were so common as they soon came to be. Gradually the letter 
will have been in a measure laid aside. The members of the 
company knew it almost by heart. The second letter may have 
reached them. That this letter was in any way secret, will not 
have entered their minds. The same thing happened in the 
other Churches that received letters from apostles. As time 
went on, as one apostle and then another passed away, some 
Churches here and there with a member or two who had a special 
liking for books or for documents, probably got all the letters 
they could reach copied for them and then kept them together, 
reading them as occasion might offer, either from beginning to 
end, or the particular part of the letter which appealed or applied 
to the moment. 

During all this time, and doubtless well on into the second 
century at least in many districts, the word was still preached in 
the passing flight of the wandering preachers, the apostles. Little 
by little it will have become known that the Gospels had been 
written. These Gospels will at first have been circulated in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the place in which each was written, 
and then have soon struck the great lines, if they were not 
already on one of them, and have reached Rome and Jerusalem 
and Alexandria. Wherever a Gospel was received, Christians will 
have compared its tenor with that which they had heard by 
word of mouth. But for a while the living voice of the evangelis- 
ing preacher will have been preferred to the dead letter in the 
book. Many Churches will for a long while have had no Gospel 
or only one Gospel, and only after much waiting have gotten 
more. Church after Church, group after group of Christians had 
then a Gospel and an Epistle or two, a few Epistles. The tendency 
of the intercourse between the Churches was towards an increase 
in the collection of books ; now one now another new one was 
added by friends to the old and treasured store of rolls. It is 
totally impossible to give any accurate idea of the rapidity of the 
accretion, totally impossible to say when it was that a number of 



58 THE CANON 

Churches secured all four Gospels and the greater part of the 
Epistles. Each one must make his own estimate. I am inclined 
to think that about the close of the first century or in the first 
twenty years of the second century — that is indefinite enough — 
the four Gospels were brought together in some places. The last 
Gospel to be written, the Fourth Gospel, must have been at once 
accepted, and that if I am not mistaken as the work of John from 
the Twelve, and have had great success. 

Let us turn to the worship, the public worship of the 
Christians. It need only be mentioned in passing that there was 
nothing like a regular order of services that prevailed all over, in 
Palestine as well as in Spain. There will have been every 
description of order of exercises, from the silence of the Quakers 
of to-day to the more elaborate liturgy or order which we shall 
now mention. I am persuaded that the ordinary services 
consisted of four parts, comprising (a) that which men offered, 
said, laid before God ; (6) that which God said to men ; 
(c) that which a man said to men ; and (d) a meal, the love- 
feast, closing with the breaking of bread, the Lord's Supper. 
The division (a), man to God, will have consisted of prayer, free 
if possible, often probably with much out of the Psalms, and, 
after the prayer, a hymn or a psalm. The division (&), God to 
men, will have consisted originally of the Scripture reading, and 
that, of course, from and only from the Old Testament. The 
division (c), man to men, contained the sermon or an address of 
some kind, an exhortation. This must have been in general the 
point at which the gospel was preached, at which the life, deeds, 
and words of Jesus were brought before the hearers. Then 
followed part four. Remember, I am not pretending to say that 
the order of services from instant to instant must have been 
(a) (&) (c) (d). All I am contending for is, that the services con- 
sisted of these four parts, of these four thoughts, if anyone prefers 
the expression, and that all that occurred during the course of the 
service, in whatever order, belonged under one head or another 
out of the four, and that anything new that might be introduced 
must vindicate for itself a place in some one of the four divisions. 
Now it is evident that the reading of letters from apostles, and, 
when the Gospels were there, the reading of the Gospels, must 
have taken place under the third part or (r), for that was all : "Man 
to Men." No one will object to the definition of this division for 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— PUBLIC WORSHIP 59 

the Epistles, and every one will grant that the Gospels also belong 
here, so soon as I call attention to the fact that the traditions 
concerning Jesus always must have been given under this heading. 
No one had at that time thought of calling the Gospels or the 
Epistles a part of Holy Writ ; the Old Testament was that. The 
Gospels were the written sermon, that is to say, the story of Jesus 
written down instead of merely being on the lips. The Epistles 
were an exhortation in writing. Whether the Christians at the 
beginning used the Jewish Parashahs and Haphtarahs, the old 
sections for the law and the prophets, or some new divisions of 
their own, does not concern us. All that we have to settle is that 
originally in the Christian Church the part (Z>), God to man, con- 
sisted solely of Old Testament lessons. 

It was, if I do not err, during the post-apostolic age that this 
was changed, that the contents of the part (b) came to be enlarged. 
That can scarcely have come about in any other way than the 
following. The Gospels and the Epistles, such of each as the 
Churches had, were read gradually more and more regularly. 
The living tradition on the lips of wandering preachers or of 
more stationary clergymen, lost day by day in freshness as the 
years passed on and the age of the apostles receded into a dim 
distance. At last it became clear, at first it may be in one 
Church and little by little then in others, that the new writings 
had a meaning for Christian life which the books of the Old 
Testament did not possess. Were the Old Testament books 
authoritative, then must these also be authoritative. Did God 
speak through the old books, then must it be His voice that was 
heard in the new books. Thus it came about that the Gospels 
and the Epistles passed from the third part of the services to the 
second part. The word of God to men was to be found as well 
in them as in the Old Testament. In the third part of the 
services the sermon remained. Sometimes a bishop's letter, 
sometimes a letter from another Church was added in that place. 
That was : Man to Men. 

It can scarcely have been at that time, but at a later date, 
which we are thus far not able to determine, that the Old 
Testament lessons were almost entirely excluded from the 
services of the Church on Sabbaths and on Sundays. Aside from 
a few, comparatively few, lessons on special days, they were 
remanded to the week days of the great fast, of Lent. 



60 THE CANON 

Before we really enter upon the examination of the literature 
of this period, it is desirable to say a word or two about doctrine, 
even if we are in the present inquiry not concerned with doctrinal 
questions. In discussing early Christian writings, objections are 
often raised touching the character, the genuineness, or the 
value of the testimony of a book because of an alleged one- 
sidedness in it. This objection takes in by far the greater 
number of cases the form of disparaging or distrusting or 
disowning what is alleged to be Pauline. It is declared or 
assumed that the ground story of the Christian Church was 
Petrine, and that only a peculiar connection with Paul personally 
or with his writings, and only a distinct aversion to Peter and 
as well an antagonistic attitude towards the old mother centre at 
Jerusalem can possibly lead, during the prefatory years to the 
Old Catholic Church, to any sentences or paragraphs or whole 
books that seem to agree with the views of the Apostle to the 
Gentiles. This is not the place to discuss this question, yet it 
appears to me to be important to emphasise at this point the 
opinion that I personally hold. It is my impression that the 
story of Paul's arrest at Jerusalem, while carrying out in the 
temple a vow suggested to him by the leaders of that one centre, 
thoroughly disposes of the notion that there existed any difference 
of doctrine between them that could conflict with the love that 
they will at Jerusalem have entertained for the man who kept 
bringing to them the gifts that he had got for them from the 
largely heathen-Christian Churches abroad. Further, it is to be 
considered that Paul was the only one who had with a facile pen 
spread out on broad lines a conception of Christian views as to 
salvation and as to life. The conclusion that I draw from this is, 
that this Pauline Christianity was, if I may so speak, the only 
Christianity of the time immediately preceding his death. 
Nevertheless, no one at that uncritical period will have 
thought of its being peculiarly Pauline. It was Christianity, 
and that was the end of the matter. 

At the outset it is well for us to consider what we may justly 
look for in the books of this time that will be of use to us in 
proving the existence and defining the authoritative character of 
the writings of the New Testament. To put the extreme case, 
some critics seem to look for such a completeness of reference 
as the only due and acceptable testimony to the presence and 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— QUOTATIONS 6l 

valuation of the New Testament, that a writer of the post- 
apostolic age could only have met their demands by writing his 
own thoughts on the margin of a copy of the entire New 
Testament, Matthew to Revelation, prefacing his work : " Citing 
as in duty bound the whole of this sacred volume, I proceed to 
discuss . . ." Others are apparently surprised to find that any 
author fails to name or at least quote most accurately every 
solitary book in the New Testament, and they find the lack of 
both for any book a sure sign that the missing book was not then 
in existence or not then known to the writer. So far from that 
does the everyday literary habit diverge, that we must on the con- 
trary be profoundly grateful when an early writer mentions any 
one of the books by name, and find great satisfaction and security 
even if he does not mention the name, if he offer us sentences 
which, even if re wrought with editorial licence, clearly point to 
the said book as their source. We should never forget that these 
writers did not write for the purpose of giving us proofs of the 
authority of the New Testament books. How many Christian 
essays might be found to-day that on ten or on thirty pages 
contain few or no quotations from the New Testament, and no 
mention of the author of a New Testament book ! And that 
leads me to emphasise the circumstance, that we must keep the 
thought of a direct quotation in many places in all our researches 
very much in reserve. If we do this we shall also hesitate to 
blame a writer for careless quotation, and be slow to suppose 
that slightly altered phrases point to other books or other texts 
than those which we have in hand. 

It would be fitting to speak of three degrees of references to 
books. In the first and lowest degree the reference is to the 
speaker or writer, at least often, a latent, a sub-conscious, 
an unconscious reference. He has, at some time or other, 
read the book in question, and a phrase has pleased him, 
has fastened itself in his brain. Now that he comes to 
speak or to write upon the topic, this sentence appears on the 
surface. It is not clear to him whence it comes. Perhaps it 
does not even occur to him that the words are not his own. 
The words are, after all, not exactlj the same as in the book 
referred to. Some of them are his. The phrase has a new cast. 
But for the man who knows the source the thing is plain. This 
kind of citing may grow so distant or so shadowy as to be little 



62 THE CANON 

more than an allusion. In the second degree the act of quoting 
may become quite clear to the writer. He may, however, at the 
instant not know precisely whence he has drawn the words or 
precisely what the original sentence is. He knows fully enough 
to make with the phrase the point that he has in mind, and he 
writes the words down without an instant's hesitation. He is 
not trying to quote, he is trying to express himself. It is totally 
indifferent to him whether the quotation be exact or not. Let us 
put it on high ground. The other author has had a divine 
thought, and has uttered it. He has the same thought, and he 
utters it too. To whom the words belong, no one cares. The 
third degree is that in which the writer goes to the book and 
copies the precise words down with painful accuracy, and names 
the book and the passage. We must always be thankful for 
what we thus get, for the insight into the earlier writings. 

This post-apostolic age opens with a book that excites our in- 
terest and calls for our admiration. It is a letter, but not a letter 
of one man to another. The Church of God that is living in this 
foreign world at the city of Rome, writes to the Church of God 
living in this foreign world at the city of Corinth. The Church 
itself could not in its corporate character seize a pen or even 
dictate a letter. Tradition tells us that a Christian named Clement 
wrote it. A certain halo encircles him. He is said by some to 
have been from a Jewish, by others from a heathen family ; he is 
fabled to have had imperial connections; he is claimed as a follower 
of Peter and as a follower of Paul ; he is the representative of law, 
of the specifically Roman characteristic, in the growing Church, 
and a number of writings gathered around his name, claiming 
for themselves his authority. There is no very good reason for 
doubting that he had himself heard the apostles, at least the two 
great apostles. This letter is probably from his pen. Someone 
in Rome wrote it, and we are bound to accept him till a better 
suggestion can be made. So far as appears, it was written about 
the year 95. The writer, in order to have been set to do this 
task, is to be supposed to be one of the older men in the Roman 
society. He may have been fifty or sixty years old. If only 
fifty, he will have been about twenty years old when Paul suffered 
martyrdom ; if he were sixty, he will have been thirty. The 
Roman Church claims him among her first bishops, and I do not 
doubt that he was the most prominent or influential man in that 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— CLEMENT OF ROME 63 

Church in his day, little as I suppose that anyone up to that 
time in that Church had received the title of bishop. Indeed this 
seems to me to be made plain by the letter itself. All in all, little 
as we know about him in detail, and much as was attached to his 
name by the fertile fancy of his admirers, he must have been an 
exceptionally strong and good man. His letter is an extremely 
valuable document. It is well written, and contains some 
beautiful passages. Further high opinion of Clement's literary 
powers is found in the fact that, as Origen relates, he was con- 
sidered by some to be the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 

The value of the testimony of Clement in this letter is 
enhanced by the fact that he is writing in the name of the 
Christians at Rome and to the Christians at Corinth. This 
causes his words to pass for both of these Churches. He knows 
about the Church at Corinth, and refers to their Church lessons, 
as we shall see. His letter shows no tokens of a bias towards 
one apostle or another, no inclination to use but a single series 
of the books of the New Testament. His language is that of the 
educated Greek Christian. Certain words were probably sug- 
gested to his mind by passages in the New Testament, now in 
Peter, now in Paul, now in John. We might say that various 
paragraphs or sentences seemed to be coloured by the cast of 
mind shown in New Testament writings, were it not that the style 
is so good and so vigorous that we have the feeling that the 
author in treating the points in question has of himself risen to 
the level of the authors who, in the New Testament, dealt with 
the same thoughts. In his exquisite chapter (ch. 49) on love he 
touches Proverbs, but through the medium of First Peter : " Love 
covereth a multitude of sins " ; and at the same time he reminds 
us of James. With his plea for subjection to other Christians he 
coincides with Titus and First Peter and Ephesians. When he 
refers to what is pleasing, good, and acceptable, before Him that 
made us, he reminds us of First Timothy, though he may simply 
be using a common form of speech. 

Again he writes (ch. 46) : " Or have we not one God and one 
Christ, and one spirit of grace shed upon us, and one calling in 
Christ ? " That is one of the cases of the use of words without 
direct quotation. Undoubtedly it was Ephesians and First Cor- 
inthians that led him to use these words, but no one of the 
passages in those letters would have fitted in precisely. In just 



64 THE CANON 

the same manner he uses (ch. 35) Paul's words from the latter 
part of the first chapter of Romans : " Casting away from our- 
selves all unrighteousness and lawlessness, avarice, strifes, both 
malice and deceit, both whisperings and backbitings, hatred of 
God, pride, and insolence, both vainglory and inhospitality. For 
those who do these things are hated of God ; and not only those 
doing them, but also those agreeing to them." How absurd it 
would be for any one to say that that was a new text for the 
passage in Romans ! When Clement quotes (ch. 34), " Eye hath 
not seen," and so on, it is probably taken from First Corinthians. 
It is, at any rate, not drawn directly from Isaiah. Perhaps it 
comes from the Revelation of Elias, but we do not know. The 
most pleasing allusion to the Epistles is to that very Epistle to 
the Corinthians. Clement says (ch. 47) : "Take up the Epistles 
of Saint Paul the apostle. What did he first write to you at 
the beginning of the gospel ? In truth, he wrote to you spirit- 
ually both about himself and Cephas and Apollos, because even 
then there were parties among you." That is very good indeed. 
Observe how he calls Paul's message a gospel. Perhaps the 
thought may arise, that Clement only treated the Epistles in 
this free way, and that because he knew the apostles, had 
known them personally. Not at all. He quotes, and that 
clearly from memory, and mixes up into one, two passages from 
Matthew, one of which is also found in Mark and Luke. It 
is not another text, it is a free quotation, introduced by the 
words (ch. 46) : " Remember the words of Jesus our Lord : for 
He said : Woe to that man. It would have been better for 
him not to have been born than to offend one of My elect ; it 
would have been better for him to have been bound round with 
a millstone and have been sunk into the sea than to offend one 
of My little ones." In another place he makes a thorough 
combination of various verses from Matthew, partly found also 
in Luke. He introduces the passage thus (ch. 13): "Especially 
remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, which he uttered while 
teaching meekness and long-suffering." It was indeed "re- 
membering," but not accurately. Clement continues : " For he 
spoke thus : Be merciful, that ye may be mercifully treated ; 
forgive, that ye may be forgiven. As ye do, so will be done to 
you. As ye give, so shall be given to you. As ye judge, so 
shall ye be judged. As ye show mildness, so shall ye be mildly 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— CLEMENT OF ROME 65 

treated. With what measure ye mete, with it shall be measured 
for you." He then calls that a command and orders. The most 
interesting thing about Clement is his close acquaintance with 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. If we could only know all about it 
that he knew. He uses its words, sometimes he quotes the Old 
Testament with its help, sometimes he follows its order of 
thought, sometimes he changes the thought round. It was said 
a moment ago that Clement was suggested by someone before 
Origen as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The man 
who proposed that was doubtless impelled by the contemplation 
of this free and intimate use of that Epistle. But we have no 
reason to suppose that Clement wrote it. He knew the Epistle 
well and he liked it amazingly, as every Christian and every lover 
of brilliant writing should love it. Do we find in this letter any 
traces of other writings that seem to have been of the same 
character as the New Testament books? No. There are 
several allusions to passages that we cannot verify, some of them 
at least closely attached to an " it is written," but they are 
probably from apocryphal books. One is, for instance, attached 
to a passage from Exodus, another to a verse from the Psalms, 
although" the context of the passages exhibits nothing of the 
kind. 

What have we gained from this early work of a Christian who 
was in a position to know all that was going on in the Roman 
Empire and in the Christian Churches, who had in his hands at 
Rome the threads that ran out through the provinces, who stood 
in correspondence with the chief Church in Greece? I hope 
that no one will say that we have gained but little, that Clement 
should have said more about the books of the New Testament. 
We stand with him at the close of the first period and at the 
opening of the second period. He may almost be said to belong 
to both. It is impossible at that time that he should think of 
making a list of the books of the New Testament for us. And 
it would be absurd for us to think that he only knew of such of 
these books as he named or quoted. We can only look for two 
great general topics that his letter may present to us in a way to 
satisfy our desire for literary testimony. One is negative, the 
other positive. The negative proposition which his letter might 
be suited to prove, or to favour so far as it goes, is that there 
were for him at the time of writing the letter no other writings 

5 



66 THE CANON 

aside from those of our New Testament that he needed to or 
cared to quote. It is to be conceded that he might have known 
of a dozen without quoting them, just as he failed to quote the 
greater part of the New Testament books. Yet, nevertheless, the 
fact is that he does not show signs of knowing of other books 
that are Christian and of acknowledged value, and this is worth 
a great deal. We must not forget that Clement's Christian 
literature mirrors itself not merely in the few direct quotations. 
It lies back of his way of thinking, his way of putting things, and 
back of his language. Nothing in all this points to other writings 
of the given kind. 

According to the theories which represent his time as one 
that overflowed with evangelical and epistolary literature, that 
would lead us to assume the existence of twenty or fifty 
Gospels and numerous letters, it would have been almost im- 
possible for him to have written so much, so long a letter, 
without quoting here and there or betraying in passing a know- 
ledge of the contents of Gospels and letters that are unknown 
to us. It is only necessary to remark, by the bye, that the 
unknown books which were quoted a few times all seem to have 
been such as belonged to the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. 
A negative is difficult of proof. The phenomenon here named 
proves nothing mathematically. But it goes to show that in the 
nineties of that first century other writings than ours were not 
held to be as valuable as ours were held to be. That is a very 
important point for the consideration of the criticism before us. 
The stream of Christian tradition is just forming, and it is in this 
respect what a defender of the high value of the present New 
Testament would wish it to be. If Clement does that for us 
negatively, he may also do much for us positively. It is possible 
that he shows direct acquaintance with James, First Peter, First 
Timothy, and Titus, although the quotations in view do not 
absolutely force this conclusion. He knows the Epistle to the 
Romans, to his own Church, and the Epistle to the Corinthians, 
to whom also he is writing, and the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
perfectly well, and he quotes our Gospels more than once. Above 
and beyond this his thoughts and his language, his sentences and 
his words, show in many places the influence of the books with 
which we are concerned. Thus Clement supports positively the 
existence of our New Testament. He does not mention all the 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— SIMON MAGUS 67 

books, but there are few that he does not seem to know. Again, 
we assert that the stream of tradition at this initial point is all 
that we could expect it to be. It can be claimed as full evidence 
for Matthew, Romans, First Corinthians, and Hebrews, and it 
fits in with the authenticity of the most of the other books. It 
disappoints no just expectations. 

Clement was a member of a well-known Church, a member 
in good and regular standing. He might be called orthodox. 
There existed, however, even at that time men who combated 
Christianity or special forms of Christianity. In part they 
were old opponents of the apostles, or the successors of such 
opponents. They represented in many diverse shadings a 
Judaism that busied itself seriously with Christianity, and 
endeavoured to enforce the law among Christians ; and this 
phase of Judaism seems to have had its foundation in Ebionism. 
Another type had some roots reaching back before the birth 
of Christ to Philo. Philo, the Therapeutae, and the Essenes 
were inclined to combine Judaism and Greek philosophy. 
Philo's way of starting was the, to him satisfactory, proof that 
all the valuable contents of that philosophy were borrowed from 
Moses. So soon then as Christianity began to spread, this 
Philonian movement became, or branched off into, what may 
be called Gnostic Ebionism or Ebionitic Gnosticism. In a 
genuine Jewish manner, this type also laid stress upon the law. 
A third type of the movements against orthodox Christianity, 
if we may use the modern term in passing, was found in a Gnos- 
ticism that proceeded from heathenism and was connected with 
the Samaritan astrologian from Gittae. This Simon Magus, who 
may be found in the eighth chapter of Acts, must have been 
a man of some importance. Though we know little directly 
about him, we can trace the influence of his activity for a long 
while. He might be called a match for or a contrast to Clement. 
Clement became the typical Churchman in the traditions of the 
second century, and Simon was the typical heretic or opponent 
of Christianity. A book called the Great Declaration is attributed 
to Simon, but may be the work of one of his pupils. 

We owe almost all our knowledge of these and many other 
heretics of the post-apostolic age to an anti-heretical book called 
the Philosophumena, that was probably written by Hippolytus of 
Rome, or rather Bishop of Portus, towards the close of the 



68 THE CANON 

first quarter of the third century. It is true that the quotations 
from the heretical writings are alleged to have been furnished 
to Hippolytus by some assistant, and not to be accurate or not 
to be precisely what they purport to be. It is not likely that 
they were manufactured out of the whole cloth. If they be 
not exactly from each of the sources to which they are severally 
attributed, they may have been extracted by a labour-hating 
hand from a single book or from one or two heretical books that 
were easy of reach. In the case of Simon, the quotations are 
probably right. A curious but telling proof for the existence 
of approved and much read Christian books is found in the 
fact that Simon or his pupils went to work to write books in 
the name of Christ and of the apostles in order to deceive 
Christians. Simon's book quotes from Matthew or Luke the 
axe at the root of the tree, from Luke the erring sheep, from 
John the being born of blood, and from First Corinthians the 
not being judged with the world. Of course, he quotes in an 
off-hand way. Freedom in the use of the words lay nearer for 
him than for Clement. If his pupil Menander wrote that book, 
these remarks would apply to him. Otherwise we know nothing 
of this Menander's views, since a reference to him in Irenaeus 
which has been connected with Second Timothy is entirely too 
vague to be of use. 

One of the Jewish opponents or heretics was Cerinthus, 
apparently by origin a highly educated Egyptian Jew who 
was fabled to have been — or was it true ? — variously in 
person an opponent of the apostles. Irenaeus' story that John 
rushed out of a public bath on seeing Cerinthus in it, crying 
that the roof might fall in on such a man, looks like a true 
story. Later tradition said that the roof did fall and kill 
Cerinthus. However that may be, Cerinthus knew and used 
at least the genealogy in Matthew and quoted from that Gospel 
that it was enough for the disciple to be as his master. The 
chief interest in Cerinthus attaches to Revelation. Although 
he was taken to be a special antagonist of John's and of Paul's, 
— because Paul belittled the law, — and to have opposed the 
genealogy in Matthew to the opening words of John's Gospel, 
he appears to have occupied himself particularly with Revelation. 
Cerinthus' apocalyptic dreams and fancies were rewarded by 
the attribution to him first of the book of Revelation itself 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— BASILIDES 69 

and then much later of the Gospel and the Epistles of John. 
This was criticism run wild. The connection of the Jew with 
the Revelation fits into the newer theory of the original Jewish 
basis for Revelation. But the upshot of the matter is that the 
Revelation is thrown back to a very early date. 

We may mention here in passing two heresies or sects, one of 
which was partly the other almost wholly of Jewish extraction. 
The Snake Worshippers, also called Ophites and Naassenes, are 
perhaps the first sect that called itself Gnostic. They claimed 
to have gotten their doctrine from Mariamne, who got it from 
James the brother of Jesus. They quote or allude to Matthew, 
Luke, John, Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Ephesians, 
and Galatians, possibly also to Hebrews and Revelation. They 
also refer to the Gospel to the Egyptians and to the Gospel 
of Thomas. This was the Christian modification of an old, 
a heathen, belief. Their opposition to John places them on 
the list of those who prove the existence of the Fourth Gospel. 
The other sect is that of the Ebionites, who say that Matthew 
wrote a Hebrew Gospel. They seem to have used apocryphal 
acts of the apostles. 

Another heretic named Basilides, from Alexandria, is 
quoted directly and fully by Hippolytus. He was a pupil of 
Menander's, and lived, so far as we can judge from the 
accounts, soon after the beginning of the second century. 
He wrote twenty-four books on the Gospel. It is clear that 
he accepts in general the books of the New Testament. He ap- 
pears to know Matthew, and he quotes Luke, John, Romans, First 
Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians. He may have alluded 
to First Timothy, and have quoted First Peter. Now it is 
extremely strange that this heretic at that early date should 
do what no one had done before him, according to our literature, 
namely, quote the books of the New Testament precisely in the 
same way as the books of the Old Testament. For example (7 22 ) : 
" And this is that which is spoken in the Gospels, He was the 
true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world." 
He quotes (7 25 ) from Romans : "as it is written," (7 26 ) from First 
Corinthians : " about which the Scripture saith," from Ephesians : 
"as is written," from Luke : "that which was spoken," and (7 27 ) 
from John : " the Saviour saying." It seems very hard to believe 
that that was written in the opening years of the second century. 



yo THE CANON 

It has been suggested that he, the heretic, would be more likely 
to emphasise the scriptural character of the new books than 
a Christian, who would assume it silently ; but I cannot see 
the least reason for such a plea. Since I know of no grounds 
upon which I could assert it likely that a Christian of a later 
day inserted the words mentioned, it seems to me to be the 
best thing to suppose that Basilides wrote this himself. But 
I insist upon it then, first, that we must remember that the 
life and activity of such a teacher is not likely to have been 
confined within a very few years ; and second, that Basilides, 
if he did not write this book later, say than in the year 130, may 
himself have at a still later date modified the form of quotation 
according to the then prevailing custom of Christians. Without 
these formulas, Basilides confirms in general our New Testament 
by exact quotations, supposing that the manuscripts are correct. 
With these formulas he advances the question of the authority 
of the books a long way. Were he of Jewish descent, had he, 
as some sentences touching him would seem to intimate, Jewish 
connections and therefore habits, the use of " as it is written," 
and of "the scripture saith," would be the more natural for 
him, would glide more easily from his pen. But precisely 
for a Jew or for a friend of the Jews, it would be less likely 
that he should think of applying to these new books the formulas 
that belonged to the sacred books of the Jews. In connection 
with Basilides, it is important to mention a contemporary of 
his named Agrippa Castor. We know very little about him, 
but one thing marks him agreeably for us. He is the first 
man, so far as we know, who in a set book defended the Gospels 
against a heretic, in his defence of them against Basilides. He 
is thought to have been a Jew. 

These scattered opponents of Christians or of the gathering 
Church have offered us no signs of other Gospels than those that 
we have already considered, and as little do they point to other 
Epistles than those in the New Testament. 

Clement was in Rome, towards the West, and was combined 
with Corinth. The next step leads us to the East, to the second 
capital of the Roman Empire, to Antioch in Syria. This city 
held the first place in Christianity after Jerusalem itself. It was 
Antioch in which the great missionaries Paul and Barnabas 
sought their foothold for their journeys. And Peter must have 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— IGNATIUS Jl 

spent much time there. It was a city not only of wealth and 
power, but also of learning, and its university was only second to 
that at Athens. Ignatius was the bishop there about the begin- 
ning of the second century. His death as martyr appears 
to have taken place after the year 107 and before the year 117. 
He wrote seven letters, so it is alleged, on his way to martyrdom 
at Rome, — seven letters addressed to the Ephesians, the 
Magnesians, the Trallians, the Romans, the Philadelphians, the 
Smyrnaeans, and to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna. An 
extended form of these letters is a piece of work from the fourth 
century. The shorter forms seem to be genuine. Should they 
be proved not to be from the hand or brain of Ignatius himself, 
— this has not yet been proved, — they would remain a very early 
and interesting monument of Christian literature. They afford 
what we might call a duly developed continuation of the Pastoral 
Epistles, and represent or place before our eyes a condition of 
affairs in the Churches which would appear to be the due 
sequence to that portrayed in those letters of Paul. 

One of the things which strikes one strangely in his letter to 
the Smyrnaeans is his use of the word catholic for the Church, and 
that both for the general Church, the Church through the world, 
and for the special, single Church as of the universally accepted 
type. This objection to the authenticity of this and therefore of 
all the letters is to be met in two ways. In the first place, some 
one must have begun the use of these words that is current at a 
later time, and that some one may have been Ignatius at this 
early period, however few applications of the term we may find in 
the immediately succeeding literature, which had but little occasion 
to use it ; but it is used in more limited sense by the Smyrnaeans 
in their letter to the Philomelians. And, in the second place, 
nothing would be easier than to suppose that the word was in 
each of the six places in which it occurs an interpolation by a 
later hand. It seems to me that the word fits in well where it 
stands, and that it agrees with the style of the writer, but it might 
easily have crept into the text from marginal glosses in one of the 
early manuscripts. 

It agrees with the style of the writer, and particularly with 
the circumstances under which the letters were written, that 
quotations are a rare thing, that they are short, and that 
they are evidently from memory. For our purpose it is 



72 THE CANON 

enough to observe that the author clearly knows our New 
Testament in general. The Gospels of Matthew and John appear 
to have been either his favourites or the ones better known to 
him. He knew the Epistles of Paul well. But at one point he 
is supposed to quote from an apocryphal book or from an other- 
wise unknown Gospel. He writes (Smyr. 3) : " And when he came 
to those around Peter, he said to them : Take, touch Me, and 
see that I am not a bodiless spirit." It may very well be from 
the Gospel of Peter, his teaching, or his preaching, or from the 
Gospel to the Hebrews as a parallel to the passage in Luke. 
The word " take " is odd at that place. That is enough. It is 
interesting and beautiful to read in the letter to the Philadelphians 
the words (ch. 8) : " For me Jesus Christ is archives." This same 
letter gives us for the first time the word Christianism as a parallel 
to Judaism. It was appropriate that Christianity should get its 
name from the city in which the word Christian was coined. 
Ignatius, if genuine, agrees well with the stream that we conceive 
to have flowed forth from the first century. If the letters be not 
genuine, they give the same testimony for a period a trifle later, 
perhaps at or soon after the middle of the second century. 

An interesting piece of testimony to the Gospels must be men- 
tioned here. Eusebius quotes in his Church History (3, 39) words 
that Papias drew from a presbyter called John, who probably 
lived about the turn of the century. This John says that Mark 
wrote his Gospel according to what he heard from Peter, and that 
Matthew wrote " Words " or " Sayings " in Hebrew, which means 
in Aramaic. This must be examined closely. It reads : " And 
this the presbyter said : Mark the interpreter of Peter wrote 
down accurately, yet not in order, so far as he [Peter] told what 
was said or done by the Christ. For he did not hear the Lord, 
nor was he a disciple of His, but afterwards as I said of Peter, 
who used to give lessons according as it was necessary, but not 
as if he were making a collection in order of the Lord's words, 
so that Mark made no mistake in thus writing down some things 
as he remembered them. For he took care of one thing, and 
that was, not to leave out anything he heard or to give anything 
in it in a wrong way." This presbyter named John probably 
lived at Ephesus at the same time that the Apostle John was 
passing his last years there. He calls Mark the interpreter of 
Peter. He might have said private secretary. The word 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— POLYCARP 73 

interpreter, however, need not be limited to the literary services 
here discussed, but may, if we consider the circumstances, have a 
further interest for us, quite aside from the story about Mark's 
Gospel. Peter the Aramaic Palestinian probably spoke some 
Greek in Galilee and Judea, but as an older man in the foreign 
capital it was doubtless desirable for him to have a younger man 
at hand to do any interpreting that was necessary. Whether that 
has anything to do with the Greek of First Peter, is a question 
for another place. What I have written " [Peter] told " may also 
be rendered " [Mark] remembered " ; the sense remains the same ; 
in each case Peter tells and Mark remembers. The giving of 
lessons, as I have written it, is, of course, his teaching, tellings 
explaining what Jesus said or did. That Peter did according as 
occasion offered, according to the needs of the occasion, or we 
may say, of the listeners. The reference to Matthew is as 
follows : " Matthew then wrote the sayings in Hebrew dialect, 
and each one translated them as he was able." The way in 
which Eusebius puts this makes it look as if this too came from 
that presbyter John. For my part, I have no doubt that these 
Aramaic sayings were the book that, after it was translated into 
Greek, became the chief source for Mark, and then for the writer 
of the first Gospel and for Luke. 

Perhaps we may attach to the year 117 tentatively a few 
pages from the letter to Diognetus, which has by some been 
supposed to have been addressed to Marcus Aurelius' tutor 
Diognetus ; we have here in mind the so-called first part of that 
letter; the second part is a totally different thing, perhaps 
thirty years later in date. This may be from Greece. We know 
little about it, but we see in it our stream of New Testament 
tradition, not in quotations, but in the whole contents. It places 
Paul's Epistles and John's Gospel clearly before us in its subjects 
and in its phrases and in its words. 

When referring to Ignatius, I named his letter to Polycarp. 
Let us turn to him. Polycarp was probably born in the year 69, 
five years after Paul's martyrdom ; and he himself was burned at 
Smyrna, where he was bishop, on February 23rd, 155. The 
stadion in which he was burned is still to be seen on the hill 
south of the city. He wrote a letter to the Philippians, Paul's 
beloved Philippians, in Macedonia, just after the martyrdom of 
Ignatius, Now I wish to lay special stress upon this Polycarp. 



74 THE CANON 

To use a figure that must not be forced, he is the keystone of 
the arch that supports the history of Christianity, and therefore 
of the books of the New Testament, from the time of the 
apostles to the close of the second century. To begin with, as 
was said, he appears to have been born about 69, and to have 
been converted by one of the apostles, perhaps by John, whose 
disciple he probably was. Irenaeus, bishop at Lyons, who was 
born in Asia Minor, of whom we have to speak later, saw 
Polycarp when a boy. Irenaeus it is who tells us that he was a 
pupil of John and bishop at Smyrna. To complete the matter, 
the Church at Philomelion in Phrygia asked the Church in 
Smyrna to tell them about the martyrs of that year — the year in 
which Polycarp was burned, and we actually have in our hands 
the account written by the Church of Smyrna for the Philomelians 
and for all Christians. Every Christian should know Polycarp's 
answer (ch. 9) to the governor's demand before the multitude 
in the stadion. The governor had tried to get him to swear by 
the emperor, but in vain. He cried out again : " Swear, and I 
release you. Revile Christ ! " Polycarp said : " Eighty and six 
years do I serve Him, and He has never done me wrong. And 
how can I blaspheme my king that saved me ? " It was a long 
fight. The governor did not wish to burn the old man who had 
willingly come up to the stadion to declare his faith. But soon 
the smoke of his fire curled up out of the stadion and was seen 
from the city and from afar upon that gulf, calling upon heaven 
and earth to witness to the death of a Christian. That is the 
keystone : A pupil of John, known to Irenaeus, at Rome to 
discuss with the Bishop Anicetus the Easter question, proclaimed 
by his Church at his death. 

A few words then about his letter to the Philippians. They 
and Ignatius too had asked him to send to them the letters 
of Ignatius, and he refers to their having sent their letters — or 
the one letter that they had received from Ignatius? — to him 
to be forwarded to Syria. In closing (ch. 13) he says that 
he sends with this letter the letters that Ignatius had sent to 
Smyrna: "and others as many as we had in our hands." That 
is an excellent example of what was said above about the inter- 
course between the Churches. Think of these few lines : 
Polycarp's surroundings connect Antioch in Syria where Ignatius 
was bishop, Smyrna where he himself was bishop, Philippi in 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— DIDACHE 75 

Macedonia to which he wrote, Philomelion in Phrygia to which 
his Church wrote about him, Rome where he conferred with 
Anicetus, and Lyons where Irenseus who had seen him died 
about 202. And this man connects through Irenseus alone the 
Apostle John who saw Jesus with the beginning of the third 
century. There may have been a dozen Christians besides who 
knew him, and who carried his traditions on to the third century. 
What did this Polycarp know about the books of the New 
Testament? His letter is full of the New Testament. It is 
plain that he had in his hands the Gospel of Matthew, and he 
probably had all four Gospels ; he had all the Epistles of Paul, he 
had First Peter and First John, and he had that letter of Clement 
of Rome. I have no doubt that he refers to Acts in his first 
chapter. That he did not set about giving precise quotations is 
due to the habit of his time and to his way of writing. He is, if 
I may say so, saturated with Peter, but he is also Pauline to a 
very high degree. We shall not meet with a second Polycarp, 
but we do not need a second. 

The next book that we have to look at is a new one. It is 
the Teaching of the Apostles, and was only discovered a few 
years ago. It may be dated in the form in which we have it 
about the year 120. It is, however, without doubt in part much 
older than that. One main source, or main part of it, is not 
Jewish Christian, but out and out Jewish in its origin. For this 
Teaching the Old Testament alone is Scripture. It contains 
over twenty allusions to New Testament books, or short 
quotations, of which a number are what we may call a free 
reproduction of Matthew. Three or four quotations seem to 
be a combination of Matthew and Luke. It shows no traces of 
a definitely other Gospel. It is in many thoughts and phrases 
much like John, but it does not quote him. One very interesting 
point has respect to the Lord's Prayer. Though we have little 
knowledge of the everyday life of the first Christians, we may 
feel sure that they were in the habit of using that prayer daily. 
The Jews had their " Hear, O Israel " ; and John the Baptist gave 
his disciples a form of prayer ; and precisely this latter instance 
led the disciples of Jesus to ask Him for a prayer, and brought 
forth from His lips this one. Now it looks as if the writer of 
the Teaching, or as if some scribe in copying it off, had not 
drawn the prayer from the text of Matthew, but had written it 



76 THE CANON 

down as he remerrbered it from his own daily use of it. It will 
be observed that we cannot prove this, yet it seems to be likely 
that the various readings came from that source. We shall later 
find a peculiarity in this prayer in Tertullian, that perhaps was 
caused in the same manner. The older, originally Jewish 
opening part, the Two Ways, contains no direct quotation from 
the Old Testament, but the second, newer part gives us two, 
from Zechariah and Malachi. One is introduced by the formula, 
"as was spoken," and the other by the words, "For this is the 
(offering) named by the Lord." Four times we find in the 
second part mention of the Gospel with words drawn perhaps 
from Matthew. It is, however, possible that these quotations 
are a later addition. They are characterised twice : " as ye 
have in the Gospel" (to which "of our Lord" is once added), 
once : " as the Lord commanded in the Gospel," and once : 
" according to the dogma of the Gospel." Once we read (ch. 9) : 
" About this the Lord hath said, Give not the holy thing to the 
dogs." But if we do not find direct quotations, we find plenty 
of sense and sentences that must have come from Matthew and 
Luke and John, and Paul's Epistles, and First Peter. 

The writer knows the majority of our New Testament books, 
and uses their words as freely as if he knew them well from begin- 
ning to end. Of course he knows books that he does not happen 
to quote. He is busy with the thoughts and not with the duty 
of quoting all the books for the benefit of the criticism of the 
canon. The testimony of this Teaching is all the more valuable 
because it is such a convenient Christian handbook. It certainly 
was then used very widely, and it passed largely into later, more 
extended writings of the same general character. The question 
may present itself to some minds, how it comes to pass that 
here as elsewhere thus far, the words of the Gospel to so great 
an extent seem to be those or nearly those of the Gospel 
according to Matthew. I will say in advance that it does net 
occur to me to suppose that none of these early writers had 
written Gospels, that their allusions or similarities are due alone 
to oral tradition. But why so often from Matthew, so seldom 
from Mark and Luke? A definite answer is impossible. But 
we may reflect in the first place that even to-day many people 
read more of Matthew than of the other two. To-day its 
position at the opening of the volume makes it easier to reach. 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— BARNABAS 77 

In the second place, there is much in it that attracts the mind. 
The rich and full Sermon on the Mount, that the author com- 
bined for himself, draws all eyes to Matthew. Think, too, of 
the groups of miracles and parables. Think of the majestic 
effect of the : " This was done because it was written," and the 
impressive fulfilment of prophecy. The great preference of 
commentators for Matthew depends doubtless partly on its 
initial position, but these other thoughts will have been of 
moment. In manuscripts we sometimes find Matthew with a 
full commentary, [John with a full one], Luke with a commentary 
on passages not already treated in Matthew, and Mark with no 
commentary, or but a very short one, because its matter is found 
in Matthew and Luke. 

Barnabas the apostle, but not one of the Twelve, is one of 
the most striking figures in the early days of Christianity. He 
stands out before us as the man who started Paul upon the 
great mission journeys, who said to him : Come with me. From 
Cyprus, long at Jerusalem, much at Antioch, no small traveller, 
he must have had a wide view of Christianity. He died, it 
may be, early in the sixties, before Paul. It would seem very 
appropriate that he should write a book of some kind for the 
Christians. Have we one from him? Perhaps so. But the 
book that bears his name, the so-called letter of Barnabas, is 
not from his pen. Sometimes it has been attributed to him, 
but wrongly. In connection with it, the question as to its having 
a right to a place in the New Testament, if it were really from 
Barnabas, has been mooted. For myself I do not doubt at all 
that it would have been one of the books of the New Testament 
if he had written it. But this statement must be accompanied 
by the remark that if he had written it, it would have been 
another, a different book. I do not mean to say that everything 
that an apostle penned would belong to the New Testament. 
A book by Matthew about the custom-houses in Palestine would 
not have been a part of the New Testament, whether written 
before or after his becoming an apostle. Just as little would 
a letter of Paul's about tent-cloth that had been ordered and 
woven have been added to his thirteen Epistles. At the same 
time, in spite of all I have previously said, we have no reason 
to suppose that the apostles were extremely inclined to write a 
number of books. And I doubt not that the most of what any 



yS THE CANON 

of them wrote after their joining Jesus, will have had some 
connection with Him and His word and works and the life of 
the Christians. 

This letter of Barnabas is a work of the second century ; 
perhaps it was written about the year 130, and at Alexandria. 
The temple had been long destroyed. Christians had begun 
at that place, at the place where the writer lived, at least to 
give up the observance of the Jewish Sabbath, and to confine 
themselves to the Lord's Day. The letter is full of the 
Old Testament, but it is the Old Testament, on the one hand 
allegorised, on the other misunderstood, ill appreciated, run 
down. He, the unknown author, is on the lookout for odd and 
striking things. He agrees to the old tradition given by Suidas 
as Etrurian, which counts six periods of a thousand years each 
before the Creation, and six of the same length after the Creation. 
The notion pleases him that Abraham's family of three hundred 
and eighteen prefigured the name of Jesus and the figure of the 
cross, because in Greek the number eighteen gives the letters 
"Je" for Jesus, and the number three hundred the letter T, 
which is clearly the cross. If he could only have known that the 
first general council at Nice two hundred years later was going to 
be attended by three hundred and eighteen Fathers, his happiness 
would certainly have been much greater. Barnabas has two 
quotations from Matthew. The sentences quoted are so short, 
and are of such an easy kind to be remembered, that the oral 
tradition might be supposed to have passed them directly on to 
Barnabas, were it not that in the one case he directly writes : 
" as is written," and thus shows that he knows of written Gospels. 
This application of the phrase, "it is written," which is the 
technical way of quoting the sacred books of the Old Testament, 
may be the earliest case of this use of the New Testament books 
as Scripture. In one place (ch. 7 11 ) he quotes words of Jesus that 
we have not in our Gospels. He has been telling about the goat 
of the day of atonement, and that the reddened wool was to be 
put upon a thorn-bush when the goat was driven out into the 
wilderness. This he declares to be a figure for the Church in 
reference to Jesus, seeing that if any one tries to get the wool 
he will suffer from the thorns, and must be under stress to 
become the master of the wool. "Thus," he says, "they who 
wish to see me, and to attain to my kingdom, must be under 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— VALENTINUS 79 

stress and suffering to take me." But these words may well be 
simply a combination of the author's and not be drawn from an 
unknown Gospel. They remind us of Paul's words in Acts on 
reaching Derbe, after being stoned and left for dead at Lystva. 
This letter has passages which remind us of Paul and of John. 
The written books are, however, still of less account than the 
tradition by word of mouth. 

During the first half of the second century an Egyptian 
named Valentinus applied himself to the question of the origin 
of all things, and the sequence of the universe. He worked out 
an elaborate system of spiritual powers, starting from the original 
source of all things and running through thirty eons. From the 
last eon, the Mother, came Christ and a shadow. The latter 
produced the Creator and the devil, with their human races. 
Jesus then came as the fruit of all thirty eons, in a merely 
apparent body, and took the spiritual people, the children of 
the Mother, and the Mother herself into the spiritual kingdom. 
He alleged that his doctrine was connected with Paul through 
Theodas. The quotations of his writings that we have are 
scanty, and some of them are not of undoubted authority. Yet 
he is a witness for the body of the New Testament books. His 
whole system, the beings that he uses, or rather their names, are 
drawn from the Gospel of John. His first three names, after the 
original source of all things, are Mind, the Father, and Truth ; 
and the following four are Word, Life, Man, Church. Of course, 
those are good words in common use ; but their use in this way 
by a Christian points, I think, unmistakably to John's Gospel. 
But we have in the case of Valentinus a witness of high authority 
and credibility, namely Tertullian, and he says that Valentinus 
appeared to use the whole New Testament as then known. He 
did, it is true, or Tertullian thought so, alter the text, but he 
did not reject one book and another. Perhaps Valentinus only 
used a different text from Tertullian. In Clement of Alexandria 
we find a reference to Valentinus that looks interesting for the 
criticism of the canon. Clement makes Valentinus distinguish 
between what was written in the public books and what was 
written in the Church. That looks like a distinction between 
books that everybody, Jew and Gentile, might read, and books 
that only Christians were permitted to read. But we have no 
clue to the exact meaning of his words. Three of the books of 



80 THE CANON 

the New Testament — Luke, John, and First Corinthians — are 
referred to by him. 

From one of the pupils of Valentinus, Ptolemaeus, we have 
a number of fragments which contain quotations from Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, John, Romans, First Corinthians, Galatians, Ephes- 
ians, and Colossians. We find, besides these fragments that 
Irenseus has kept for us, in Epiphanius an interesting letter written 
by Ptolemaeus to a Christian woman named Flora ; and he refers 
in it to Matthew, John, Romans, First Corinthians, and Ephes- 
ians. Irenaeus storms at the Valentinians because they wrote a 
new Gospel called the Gospel of Truth ; and Epiphanius tells of 
two other Gospels written by Gnostics, the Gospel of Eve and 
the Gospel of Perfection. Should we call these apocryphal 
Gospels if we had them in our hands, and place them beside the 
Gospel of the Infancy and the Gospel of Thomas, for example ? 
I very much doubt it. I do not suppose that these Gospels 
offered an account of the life and works of Jesus and the apostles. 
They were probably more or less fantastic representations of the 
doctrines of the special Gnostic sects, the Gospel of Truth of 
the Valentinian sect, from which they proceeded. We have 
directly from the Valentinian school most important testimony, 
not only to the existence, but also to the high value of the 
Gospels which are in the New Testament; for Heracleon, a 
near friend of Valentinus', wrote upon the Gospels. Perhaps 
he wrote a commentary to one or all of them, perhaps he 
commented particular passages that seemed to him to be more 
interesting. We cannot tell. Origen quotes his comments on 
John ; and Clement of Alexandria mentions a comment of his 
on a passage in Luke. And the quotations give references to 
Matthew, Romans, First Corinthians, and Second Timothy. 
All that shows that these branches of Christianity held to the 
main books of the New Testament. Nothing shows that they 
dreamed of putting their books upon a level with the books that 
became afterwards a part of our New Testament. Heracleon 
quoted the Preaching of Peter, but we do not know that he 
considered it scripture. One branch of the followers of Valen- 
tinus, the pupils of a Syrian named Mark, are said to have 
written, to have forged Gospels, but they went back, so far as 
we can see, only to our four Gospels, not to any unknown 
or apocryphal Gospels. 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— MARCION 8 1 

We must now turn to a man who claims a great deal of 
attention. His name is Marcion. His father was the Bishop 
of Sinope on the coast of Paphlagonia. He is in every way the 
most active and influential man, bearing the name of Christian, 
between Paul and Origen. The position of the Christian Church 
towards the Scriptures of the Old Testament seemed to him to 
be totally false. He quarrelled with his father and went to 
Rome. At Rome he quarrelled with the Church and left it. 
Polycarp called him "Satan's firstborn." In spite of all 
difficulties he set about founding a Church of his own about 
the year 144, and he succeeded. Churches of his sect were to 
be found in Syria as late as the fifth century. The thing that 
interests us about Marcion in the criticism of the canon is the 
fact that he set to work to make a New Testament for himself. 
That is to say, not that he wrote the books, but that he decided 
upon them, passed judgment upon their merits, their value, 
their right to a place in a Christian collection. Here we find 
in fact, so far as the authority of this Church founder could be 
said to determine anything duly, a canon. Here for the first 
time in the history of the Christian Church a clear cut, definitely 
rounded off New Testament offers itself to view. He was led 
in his selection of the books by his opinions about the course 
of history. The usual supposition that the God of the Old 
Testament and the Messiah of the Old Testament were the 
God and the Christ of the Christians was wildly wrong. The 
God who made the world was the Demiurge ; he was just, in a 
way, but only just, not good. He was in the Old Testament 
hardhearted and cruel and bloodthirsty. Jesus let Himself be 
called the Messiah simply to fit in with the thoughts of the 
people. He was not the son of a virgin, because that was 
impossible. He simply came down from heaven and afterwards 
went back to heaven. Of course, then, Marcion cast the Old 
Testament aside. A Jewish Gospel like Matthew was nothing 
for him. Why John did not suit him it is hard to say ; probably 
the author was too Jewish for him, and besides it joined Jesus 
directly with the creation of the bad Demiurge's world. He 
chose for himself the Pauline Gospel according to Luke, and 
omitted from it what his unerring eye knew to be from the 
wrong sphere, the sphere of the Demiurge. Acts had too much 
of Peter in it. The Epistle to the Hebrews, it is hardly necessary 
6 



82 THE CANON 

to say, was altogether impossible. The Pastoral Epistles were 
probably too local. 

In the end, then, his New Testament, we may say his 
Bible, consists of the Gospel part or the Gospel of Luke, 
and of the Apostle part or the ten Epistles of Paul ; he 
called Ephesians the Epistle to the Laodiceans. His Gospel 
began perhaps with these words : "In the fifteenth year of 
Tiberius Caesar, in the times of Pilate, Jesus descended into 
Capernaum, a city of Galilee." Therewith he had disposed of 
all birth accounts and genealogical tables. Towards the close 
the Crucifixion must have been omitted. And the identification 
of the person of Jesus may have been joined directly to the 
thought that He really was an " appearance," a " spirit." His 
Apostle began with Galatians, after which the Epistles to the 
Corinthians, Romans, and Thessalonians followed. Then came 
the Epistle to the Ephesians, but named Laodiceans. Colossians, 
Philippians, and Philemon finished the book. What would the 
Church have been if this headstrong man had succeeded in 
carrying out his plans, if that were our whole New Testament ? 
Doubtless Marcion was moved by lofty thoughts. It was 
certainly nobler to condemn the bloodthirstiness that Israel 
attributed to its God than to condone it. But his influence, 
though it held out long, did at last fade away. It seems likely 
that many of the Christians in his Churches, partly from indiffer- 
ence or from ignorance out of mere accident, came, as years 
passed by, to use other books of the general New Testament 
of the Church. The whole Marcionitic movement has its great 
value for the criticism of the canon in its testimony, which 
is undoubtable, to the mass of the New Testament books. 
Marcion's books were a selection from the books of the Church. 
In the second place, it shows with the clearness of daylight 
that up to that moment no canon had been determined upon 
by the general Church. And, in the third place, it shows how 
tenaciously the Christians clung to what books they had, when 
the stormy and vigorously generalled Marcionitic movement, 
with its arraignment of the remaining books, succeeded after all 
in making no lasting impression upon the general contents of 
the New Testament. 

If any title for a book destined for Christians could be 
appropriate, it is that of the Shepherd. Jesus called Himself 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— HERMAS 83 

the good Shepherd. A brother of Pius, the bishop of Rome, 
wrote it. Pius was bishop probably about from 141 to 157. 
A threefold tradition says that his brother wrote the Shepherd 
while Pius was in the chair. It contains eight visions, twelve 
commands, and nine parables communicated to him by the 
Church and the Shepherd. The tenth parable is the closing 
section of the book, and contains the rules given to Hermas 
how to order his life from henceforth. It will be at once clear 
that a dream-book of this kind cannot be expected to contain 
quantities of quotations from sheerly practical writings like the 
Gospels and the Epistles in general. I suppose that people 
seldom quote in dreams. The ecstatic condition makes the 
writer all in all, without books. From the contents of the whole 
composition it seems plain that the author knew at least one of 
our synoptic Gospels ; the knowledge of all three is not to be 
proved from the text. For myself, I do not doubt that all three 
Gospels, all four Gospels, were well known at Rome before that 
time. This author had no mission to speak of them in detail. 
It seems certain that he knew the Epistle to the Ephesians. 
The other Pauline Epistles do not come to the front. Some 
things remind us of Hebrews, but we need not press the 
similarity. The Epistle of James is discernible partly in its 
matter, in the thoughts and things mentioned in it, and partly 
in the words used. Of course, the book of Revelation fitted best 
of all into Hermas' ideas. 

He is one of the organisers of the renewal of the Old 
Testament, and of the law in the Old Catholic Church that 
is beginning to knit together. But it is not the more open 
Jewish manner with the notion that the Church is merely 
Judaism perfected. It is a Christianity that takes to itself 
serried legal forms. This kind of Christianity cannot be 
called Mosaic, but it is just the kind of Christianity that must 
commend itself to a mind that had been brought up under 
severely Jewish influences. We should not, however, fail to 
observe where we stand. If I do not err, the reason for the 
growth of this kind of religion then and there is to be sought, 
not in the Old Testament and not in Ebionitic fancies of the 
movers, but in the spirit of the people in which the new religion 
had now been present for nearly a century. To dispose of 
Ebionism, it was the tendency of this spirit that led the movers 



84 THE CANON 

to Ebionitic thoughts, not Ebionitic teaching which warped 
them from a description of Christianity that lay nearer to their 
hearts. The early Christianity at Rome was by the time of 
the Epistle to the Romans of a heathen Christian cast. It could 
not at that time be well other than Greek. It remained Greek 
in language even beyond the time with which we are now dealing. 
But as years passed by the Roman element grew stronger and 
began to think for itself. The soul of Rome was law. And 
that law, that sense of law and for law, must needs be impressed 
upon the form that Christianity finally assumed in the eternal 
city. The growth of the Old Catholic Church is not merely to 
be charged to a general human perversity, and its leaning towards 
the Old Testament is not alone a token of a new life in Jewish- 
Christian circles in the second century, and its centring and vast 
strength in Rome was not solely the consequence of the 
enormous influence of the capital of the world. The crystallisa- 
tion of this Church was the necessary consequence of the action 
of the spirit of the Roman people upon the Christian Church. 
For those Christians, little as they overcast the whole sphere to 
reach such a conclusion, the new form of Christianity was not 
one of the retrograde steps, returning to the used-up bottles of 
the Old Testament, but a step forward. It was not a Judaising, 
but a Romanising of Christianity. It was not conceived of as a 
limiting of Christianity, much as it would block heresy, but as 
a development and opening out of its capabilities. 

At the close of the second vision we have a chance to see how 
a good book would then be started on its way in the Church. 
The elder woman, the Church, asks Hermas whether he has 
already communicated to the elders a book that he had borrowed 
from her to copy off. When he replied No, she says that it is all 
right, she wishes to add something : " When, then, I shall finish 
all these words, they shall be made known by thee to all the elect." 
The process was to begin with the making two copies, so that 
three books should be available : " Thou shalt write, then, two 
little books, — that is to say, two copies, — and thou shalt send one 
to Clement and one to Grapte. Clement will then send out to 
the cities outside, for that is charged upon him. And Grapte 
will put in mind the widows and the orphans. You, however, 
will read it in this city with the elders who stand at the head 
of the Church." Is not that a pretty window looking in upon 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— HERMAS 85 

the literary habit in Christian Rome ? In the rest of the visions 
the Church bids him again and again to " tell " the saints what 
she says. The word of mouth is still powerful. But in the 
commandments the Shepherd who takes charge of him again 
enjoins him repeatedly to write. Thoroughly Pauline is (Vis. 3, 8) 
the putting Faith at the head of the seven women who bear the 
tower, the Church : " The first one of them, the one clasping 
her hands, is called Faith. By this one the elect of God are 
saved. The next one, the one girt up and holding herself firmly, 
is called Self-mastery. This is the daughter of Faith." Later 
follow, each the daughter of the preceding : Self-Mastery, Sim- 
plicity, Purity, Holiness, Understanding (or Insight), and Love. 
"Of these, then, the works are pure and holy and divine." In 
the ninth parable (ch. 15) the Shepherd calls them virgins, and 
there are twelve of them : " The first Faith, and the second Self- 
mastery, and the third Power, and the fourth Long-suffering, 
and the others standing in the midst of these have the names : 
Simplicity, Purity, Chastity, Cheerfulness, Truth, Insight, Con- 
cord, Love. The one who bears these names and the name of 
the son of God will be able to enter into the kingdom of God." 
The Christianity that this beautiful dream depicts is from the 
beginning to the end a Christianity that lives upon our New 
Testament and not on books of which we know nothing. 

We have a sermon, a homily, written soon after Hermas, and 
at Rome. It is even barely possible that the Clement whom 
Hermas above mentions wrote it. We cannot tell. It would 
have been in that case all the more easy for it to be attributed, 
as it was for centuries, to the same Clement as the one who 
wrote the good letter from the Church at Rome to the Church 
at Corinth. Curiously enough this sermon gives several 
quotations that do not agree with our Gospels. Undoubtedly 
it is possible in one or two passages that the writer merely gives 
the words at haphazard from memory, as has been done even 
in modern sermons. In other cases the author probably had a 
Gospel that we do not know the text of, perhaps the Gospel of 
the Egyptians. He used Old Testament books. That we do 
not in the course of a single sermon find allusions to the mass 
of the New Testament, is nothing strange. He, the writer, says 
(ch. 4), where he is speaking of the Lord : " For He saith, Not 
every one saying to Me Lord, Lord, shall be saved ; but he that 



86 THE CANON 

doeth righteousness." That may be from an unknown Gospe\ 
but it may be his homiletical way of using Matthew's account. 
The following, however, gives a new turn (ch. 4) : " The Lord said, 
If ye were gathered together with Me in My bosom and should 
not do My commandments, I will cast you out and say to you, 
Begone from Me, I know not whence ye are, workers of law- 
lessness." If it be not a confused and rewrought shape of several 
Gospel passages, we do not know whence it comes. It is good, 
plain sermon quotation of our Gospels when he says (ch. 5) : " For 
the Lord saith, Ye shall be as lambs in the midst of wolves." 
If anyone could have called his attention to the words of Jesus : 
" Behold, I send you as lambs in the midst of wolves," he would 
at once have replied: "That is just what I said, Ye shall be 
as lambs in the midst of wolves." For a mind of that kind in 
a sermon a general approach in thoughts and words is more 
than enough to justify the phrase : The Lord saith. In another 
place he uses words which we find in a like form in Irenaeus 
and in Hilary. They are in a measure a rounding off of a 
passage in Luke, and they may have stood in the original 
book of Matthew of which we spoke at the outset : " For the 
Lord saith in the Gospel, If ye keep not that which is little, 
who will give you that which is great? For I say unto you 
that the one faithful in the least is faithful also in much." One 
of the phrases used by this sermon-writer confirms for us his 
careless way of writing, yet it throws light upon the position 
which the New Testament books were then beginning to take 
as of a similar value to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and 
it at the same time uses them as of authority : " I account you 
not ignorant that the living Church is Christ's body . . . and 
that the books and the apostles [say] the Church is not from 
now but from before." The books are the Old Testament, it 
is the Bible ; and the apostles are here the New Testament. 
There is not the least reason to suppose that this preacher used 
any other New Testament than ours, in spite of his quotations 
from a strange Gospel or so. We know that a few such books 
were in existence, and that they were occasionally used. Nothing 
indicates that the strange Gospel was to supplant one of the 
four Gospels. 

A few lines, in two chapters, make up the second part of 
what is called above the Letter to Diognetus. Nothing betrays 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— JUSTIN MARTYR 87 

to us the origin or purpose of these few lines distinctly, if the 
close may not be supposed to be the close of a sermon. The 
style is florid but lofty. The author describes clearly for us 
(ch. n) in one well turned sentence his Bible and its union with 
the Church : " Then the fear of the law is sounded abroad, and 
the grace of the prophets is made known, and the faith of the 
Gospels is grounded, and the tradition of the apostles is guarded, 
and the grace of the Church leaps for joy." There we have 
the law, the prophets, the Gospels, and the apostles. The word 
tradition used for the apostles no more points away from the 
books to the living tradition by word of mouth than the grace 
of the prophets applies to something not in the Old Testament. 
The author refers (ch. 12) to First Corinthians: "Knowledge 
puffeth up, but love buildeth up." The Word appears every- 
where in this fragment, and the writer must have known John. 

It appeared from what we said above that the great spirit, 
even if the somewhat unmanageable one, between Paul and 
Origen was Marcion. He passed through the Church and the 
Churches like a storm, tearing much down here and there, 
building some things up, and certainly inspiring many souls with 
loftier thoughts of God and with more intense devotion to 
purity of personal life than they had cherished before. Justin 
the Martyr was of a totally different character. His name fills, 
nevertheless, a very large place in the annals of the early Church, 
in the chronicles of the second Christian century. He was born 
probably about the year 100, near Jacob's Well, for the Greek 
family from which he sprang lived at Nabulus, Flavia Neapolis, 
old Sychar, Sichem. The Greek Samaritan was of cooler metal 
than the Paphlagonian, and instead of starting out with a certain 
thesis that alone was truth, he set out to seek the truth among 
the philosophers of his day, and he closed his eventful life at 
Rome as a martyr probably in the year 165. 

The order and success of his quest is very interesting. He 
tells Trypho the Jew about it in his dialogue with him (ch. 2). 
" I at first . . . handed myself over to a Stoic. And I having 
spent enough time with him, since nothing more was imparted to 
me about God (for he neither knew himself, nor did he say that 
this was a necessary object of study), I changed from him and came 
to another called a Peripatetic, in his own opinion a keen man. 
And this one, after enduring me the first few days, wished me 



88 THE CANON 

then to name his fee, so that the intercourse should not be with- 
out benefit for us. And him I left for that reason, not thinking 
him to be in the least a philosopher. My soul was, however, still 
all aglow to hear the genuine and lofty side of philosophy, and I 
went to a very celebrated Pythagorean, a man who laid great 
store in philosophy. And then as I conversed with him, wishing 
to become a hearer and close pupil of his : What then ? Art thou 
at home in Music and Astronomy and Geometry ? Or dost thou 
think that thou canst perceive any of the things that conduce to 
happiness, if thou hast not first learned these things which draw 
the soul from the things of sense and prepare it to use the things 
of the mind ? " Justin was rather discomfited when the Pytha- 
gorean sent him away. But he thought of the Platonists, and 
went to them. They pleased him. The theory of the ideas 
gave wings to his thoughts, and he soon became so puffed up 
that he thought he might hope soon to see God. Wishing to 
consider some things quietly he went out towards the sea 
(perhaps from Ephesus). There a very old and mild and holy 
man met him and asked him about philosophy only at last to 
tell him of Christ. Remember what was said above about Chris- 
tianity as a life. Justin relates (ch. 8) : "I took fire at once in 
my soul, and a love seized me for the prophets and for those 
men who are Christ's friends. And considering with myself his 
words, I found that this was the only safe and useful philosophy. 
Thus and therefore am I a philosopher." Carping souls have 
sometimes suggested that Justin remained to the end more a 
philosopher than a Christian. His story of this first acquaintance 
with Christianity is not marked by a lack of warmth. Must 
every Christian be as hotheaded as Marcion ? And Justin went 
about in his philosopher's robe persuading men with tongue and 
pen that Jesus was better than all the philosophers. 

Were we not sure that our four Gospels were by this time as a 
simple matter of ecclesiastical and literary necessity long domiciled 
at Rome, long known on all the main roads and in all the chief 
towns of Christian frequence, Justin would be the one to assure 
us of it. The examination of his testimony will be in more than 
one way instructive. The great question in respect to any author 
who quotes texts is, how he quotes. We wish to know whether 
he gets down a roll every time he wishes to refer to a sentence, 
or whether he writes down the general sense and the words as 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— JUSTIN MARTYR 89 

they occur to him in dashing them off with a quick pen. There 
are so many quotations in Justin that we are not at a loss for 
material to examine. Now these quotations are to a large 
extent from the Old Testament. There we are on neutral 
ground. There no one can think that we are trying to save the 
appearances of a canonical Gospel or to avoid the words of an 
uncanonical one. The first remark to be made is the curious 
one that Justin in various quotations from the Septuaginta 
translation of the Old Testament agrees strikingly with Paul in 
words which do not coincide with those in the common text. 
Now this is not to be explained by the theory that Paul and 
Justin both happened to make precisely the same deviations in 
trying to give the same verses. The reason seems clearly to be 
this, that Justin knew the Epistles of Paul so well that all the 
passages from the Old Testament in them took for him the form 
that Paul had clothed them with. Justin says to Trypho the Jew 
(ch. 39) : " It is nothing marvellous, I continued, if you hate us 
who know these things, and denounce your ever hard-hearted mind. 
For Elias, too, begging for you to God, says : Lord, Thy pro- 
phets have they slain, and Thy altars have they torn down ; and 
I alone am left, and they seek my life. And He answers him, I 
still have seven thousand men who have not bent their knee to 
Baal." In the main point that is Paul's way of quoting this 
passage in Romans. And, the one difference of a few words is 
probably due to a slip in Justin's memory. 

Another check is to be found in the passages that Justin 
quotes more than once, for we find in a large number of 
cases that he does not give precisely the same words each 
time. It is not singular, after we are thus sure that he is 
quoting out of his head, that we find him naming the wrong 
author for a passage, Jeremiah for Isaiah, or Hosea for Zech- 
ariah. If he names the passage more than once, he may have 
the name right in one place and wrong in another. Some- 
times he combines various passages that fit together into the 
thought and expression. Sometimes he warps the words to suit 
his point. And ever and ever again, by the sovereign right of a 
writer to give the sense without regard to words, he quotes the 
Greek Old Testament in such a way that if it were the text of 
the Gospels many an investigator would be inclined to call it a 
quotation from an unknown Gospel. If that be the way in which 



90 THE CANON 

Justin cites the Scriptures of the Old Testament, we may in 
advance feel sure that he will not act in the least, differently when 
he refers to the words of the New Testament. Strange that we 
so often berate men for cleaving to the letter in their words, and 
that we in this case because of a modern view of the holiness 
and intangibility of the words of the Bible, a view based partly 
on the post-Christian Jewish Masoretic habits, are so much dis- 
contented with these ancient worthies who strike at the heart of 
the matter and think nothing of ,the form. Do we, when we feel 
stirred against the writers and preachers who quote carelessly, — 
do we ever reflect upon the fact that we are not able to say 
what book of the Wisdom of God Jesus refers to towards the 
end of the eleventh chapter of Luke ? " On this account also 
the Wisdom of God said, I will send to them prophets and 
apostles, and some of them they will slay and will persecute, in 
order that the blood of all the prophets that was shed from the 
founding of the world should be demanded of this generation, 
from the blood of Abel till the blood of Zacharias, who was slain 
between the altar and the house." If Jesus could quote God's 
Wisdom so that we cannot verify His words, much more may late 
writers like Justin allow themselves a certain freedom in the use 
of Gospel texts. 

Before we enter upon the examination of his use of the 
words of Jesus, we must refer to the name that he employs 
for the books from which he draws these words. He does 
not usually call them Gospels. We must bear in mind that 
the title Gospel was not at first attached to each of the books. 
In Justin's three genuine works which have been preserved, the 
two (one) Apologies and the Dialogue with Trypho, we find 
references to the Gospel in the singular, Trypho speaks thus, and 
to the Memoirs or Memorabilia which are Apomnemoneumata 
precisely like Xenophon's Memorabilia. Eight times he calls 
these memoirs : " Memoirs by the Apostles." Four times he 
calls them only : " Memoirs." Once he calls them : " Memoirs 
composed by the Apostles of Christ and by those who followed 
with them." In this latter case he quotes Luke. And once, 
in quoting Mark on the name Jesus gave Peter and on the 
name Boanerges for James and John, he calls them : " Peter's 
Memoirs," doubtless in allusion to the account in Papias that 
Mark wrote down Peter's words. The writers of the Gospels, 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE — JUSTIN MARTYR 91 

that is to say, of these Memoirs, Justin calls Apostles in one 
place, for he says : " the Apostles wrote," and adds a point given 
in all four Gospels. He refers to these writers (Apol. 33) as : 
" those who have written memoirs of all things concerning our 
Saviour Jesus Christ whom we believe." 

Justin also tells us something else about these books, 
something that is very important and that will take our thoughts 
back to the usages and habits in the divine services in the 
early Christian Church. It is well on in his Apology for the 
Christians to the heathen emperor (ch. 67), and he describes 
the weekly worship of the Christians : " On the day called the 
day of the Sun a gathering takes place of all who live in the 
towns or in the country in one place, and the memoirs of 
the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, so long as 
the time permits. Then the reader stops and the leader 
impresses by word of mouth, and urges to imitation of, these 
good things. Then we all stand up together and send forth 
prayers." Here it is plain that in the circles that Justin was 
acquainted with, these Memoirs, whatever they were, were not 
regarded as being upon a very different plane from the Scriptures 
of the Old Testament, It is true that he does not speak with 
great exactness. It would be possible for him to say what he 
says, even if the Memoirs were still regarded as human books, 
were oniy read in the public services under the heading of: Man 
to Men. Nevertheless, after making every allowance, it must 
be granted that when he names the Memoirs before the Old 
Testament Scriptures, he really places them not merely on a 
level with them, but above them. Of course, the writings of the 
prophets must here include the Law. He is only giving a general 
description. 

The fact that Justin causes Trypho to speak of the Gospel 
in the singular has nothing to do with the use of one Gospel 
book instead of the four Gospels. Even to-day, a writer or 
orator does not hesitate to speak of what we find in the Gospel, 
meaning merely in the Gospel story of Jesus, and totally irrespec- 
tive of the point whether the matter in question happens to stand 
in only one of the four Gospels or in two or in all four. And 
whatever may happen to-day, we have many a writer of the time 
following that of Justin who says Gospel in the singular ; for 
example, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, 



92 THE CANON 

Origen, Hippolytus, and Tertullian. Thus far, then, we have 
found that Justin speaks of the Gospel, of the Gospels, but 
especially of the " Memoirs of his Apostles," a form used five 
times, — a form in which " his " can refer to no one but Jesus. 
Let us count it up : Justin, who as a Christian philosopher has 
passed through many lands, knows books telling of Jesus, written 
by His apostles and by those who followed with them, called 
Gospels. He calls them Memoirs. Has the name Memoirs any 
particular value for Justin or for anyone else ? Scarcely. It was 
probably a mere philological fancy of Justin's that was born with 
him and died with him. It undoubtedly fitted well into his 
discussions with men of classical training to be able to use thus 
Xenophon's word as an introduction for the written story of 
Jesus. Otherwise the word was not of the least importance. 
We may therefore let the word Memoirs pass and take up the 
word Gospels, for Justin says they are also called Gospels. 

Does anything go to show that Justin had among the number 
of these Gospels a Gospel that we do not possess among our 
four Gospels? He speaks of Christ as born in a cave, of the 
Wise Men as from Arabia, and of Christ's making ploughs and 
yokes as a carpenter, all of which is not in our Gospels. But 
then that is not in other serious Gospels, and it is nothing to us 
whether Justin got it from verbal tradition or from some current 
apocryphal Gospel. We certainly have no ground to expect 
in advance that he would name for our special benefit every 
New Testament book that he knew of. He does mention one 
book besides the Gospels, and that is the Revelation. It is in the 
Dialogue with Trypho (ch. 81) : " And then, too, a certain man 
of our number, his name was John, one of the apostles of the 
Christ, prophesied in a revelation made to him that those who 
believed in our Christ would spend a thousand years in Jeru- 
salem, and that after this the general and, in a word, the eternal 
resurrection of all like one man would take place, and the 
judgment." That is the only other book of the New Testament 
that he names. 

When we examine the words that he quotes from the Memoirs 
and ask ourselves whether or not they could be, could have been 
drawn from our four Gospels, we must at once recall what we 
learned from the examination of his quotations from the Old 
Testament. It is not the habit of Justin to take down a roll and 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— JUSTIN MARTYR 93 

copy off a sentence carefully when he wishes to quote it. He 
reproduces a passage from the Old Testament just as it comes 
into his thoughts, and we may be sure that he will do exactly the 
same with the New Testament. Ezra Abbot examined this 
matter and placed the results, as follows, far beyond the reach 
of doubt. In the sixty-first chapter of the Apology Justin describes 
baptism : " Those who are persuaded and believe that these things 
which we teach and say are true, and promise to be able to live 
thus, are taught to pray fasting and beseech God for the remission 
of the former sins, we praying and fasting with them. Then they 
are led by us to a place where there is water, and in the manner 
of new birth, in which we ourselves also were new born, they are 
born again. For in the name of the Father of all things and 
Master God and of our Saviour Jesus Christ and of Holy Spirit 
they then undergo the washing in the water. For the Christ also 
said : If ye be not born again, ye shall in no wise enter into 
the kingdom of the heavens. But that it is impossible for 
those who have once been born to enter into the wombs of 
those who bore them is clear to all." Now in the third 
chapter of John we read: "Jesus answered and said to him — 
that is, to Nicodemus — : Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except 
a man be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God. 
Nicodemus saith to Him : How can a man be born when he 
is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, 
and be born ? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, 
Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter 
into the kingdom of God." For a man who did not already 
know how Justin quotes, the difference between the words in 
Justin and those in John might in truth seem to exclude the 
suggestion that Justin was really quoting from John. Careful 
investigation shows, however, in the first place, that pretty much 
all the omissions made here and there by Justin have also been 
made by well-known Church writers of a later date, and who 
certainly quoted John. As for the changes in words, so that the 
sense rather than the form of John is reproduced, these changes 
are to be matched in similar later writers, some of them ten times, 
some of them twenty times, some of them sixty times. 

The last touch of proof for the thorough nothingness of the 
claim that Justin was here using some unknown apocryphal 
Gospel, is given by a comparison of the use of this text in the 



94 THE CANON 

writings of the famous English clergyman Jeremy Taylor, who 
died in 1667. He quoted this passage at least nine times. It 
scarcely need be said that he got it from the English version of the 
Gospel of John and not from an unknown Gospel. Now Jeremy 
Taylor writes every time " Unless " instead of " Except " ; that 
is so uniform, it must, of course, be another Gospel. He writes 
six times " kingdom of heaven " for " kingdom of God " ; that is 
a great difference ; the kingdom of heaven is like Matthew. Once 
he says merely " heaven " instead of " kingdom of God." He 
writes four times " shall not enter " instead of " cannot enter." 
He writes the second person plural "ye" twice instead of the 
third person singular. He writes once "baptized with water" 
instead of " born of water." He writes once " born again of 
water " instead of " born of water." He writes once " both of 
water and the Spirit" instead of "of water and of the Spirit." 
He omits "of" before Spirit six times. He adds "holy" before 
Spirit twice. We see that in spite of the ease with which an 
English clergyman in the seventeenth century could refer to the 
text of a Gospel passage, he did not do it. What wonder that 
Justin did not do it in the second century, when he would have 
had to unroll a roll and look around for the words. Even the 
Book of Common Prayer quotes this passage twice alike, and 
wrong. That one passage shows of itself that Justin used the 
Fourth Gospel. He probably used all four Gospels. 

The thought that Justin did not know our Gospels, but used 
apocryphal ones, finds a very good blocking-off in a single 
passage. In speaking of Jesus' baptism (Dial. 103), Justin gives 
as addressed to Him the heavenly words : " Thou art My Son. 
This day have I begotten Thee." These words are in some 
of our witnesses to-day for the passage in Luke. Now Justin 
does not attribute these words to the Memoirs, but adds after 
these words that in the Memoirs of the Apostles the devil is 
then described as having come to Him and tempted Him. 
He appears to distinguish between the Memoirs and the source 
of that addition. It was seen above that Justin said that the 
Memoirs were from the apostles and from those who followed 
them. That looks as if Justin had in view Matthew and John 
as apostles, and Mark and Luke as followers of apostles. A 
passage in the Dialogue (ch. 88) appears to confirm this thought 
by referring to something given alone by Matthew and John, 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— JUSTIN MARTYR 95 

as written by the apostles ; it is the only passage in which 
Justin says the apostles have written: "And then when Jesus 
came to the river Jordan, where John was baptizing, as Jesus 
went down into the water also fire was kindled in the Jordan ; 
and when He came up from the water, like a dove the Holy 
Spirit flew upon Him, wrote the apostles of this our Christ." 
It is that last part for which Justin appeals to the apostles 
as if meaning that that was told by Matthew and John, in whose 
Gospels it is. 

In telling Trypho of the vast love of God and His readiness 
to take men who are willing to come to Him, Justin gives us a 
word, a saying of Jesus that is not in our Gospels. It may have 
passed from the tradition by word of mouth to the Gospel of 
the Hebrews. After quoting Ezekiel, Justin continues (ch. 47) : 
" For this reason also our Lord Jesus Christ said : In whatsoever 
things I shall light upon you, in these also I shall judge you." 
We might instead of " light upon " say directly " catch " you. 
In another passage in the Dialogue (ch. 35), Justin quotes two 
passages from Matthew, and in between them the words : " And 
there shall be schisms and heresies." This occurs in another 
form in the Clementines. It may be a word of Jesus. But it 
may also be a vague deduction from some words of Paul that 
came to be attributed to Jesus. That is all that Justin gives us 
from possible other Gospels. It is not much. 

What Justin says about Jesus is then almost without ex- 
ception precisely what our Gospels gave him, and we may be 
positively sure that he got it out of no other Gospels. He 
exaggerated it may be, as when he writes that Herod killed 
all the male children in Bethlehem ; but that might befall 
a writer at any date who liked strong statements. In like 
manner he declares that the first Jewish calumniators of the 
Christians at the resurrection sent picked men out into the whole 
world denouncing the theft of the body of Jesus and the false 
story of the resurrection and ascension. That was a very easy 
stretching of the story in Matthew. A story-teller would regard 
it as altogether legitimate. In some passages we may hesitate 
whether to suppose that he himself was the author of a certain 
addition to or an exegesis of Gospel words, or whether to assume 
that he had heard them from others as he travelled about. 
Some of them may have been rabbinic Jewish interpretations 



g6 THE CANON 

which had passed over into Jewish Christian and Christian 
circles. For example, it makes us think of the writer of our 
Gospel of Matthew when we read that Justin first quotes Moses 
(Apol. 54) : "A ruler shall not fail from Judah. . . . And he shall 
be the longing of the Gentiles, binding to the vine his foal," 
and, as he recounts the fulfilment of all the details of the 
prophecy, assures us : " For a certain foal of an ass stood in a 
byway of the village bound to a vine." He may just as well here 
be following Jewish commentators on Messianic passages. The 
writer of the Gospel of Matthew would scarcely have failed to 
add that vine, if he had thought of it, and have declared : " That 
took place in order that the words might be fulfilled." 

Justin's books are full of scripture, full of gospel matter. The 
gospel matter is from our four Gospels precisely as we must look 
for it to be. Justin is a witness for widely separated countries 
and Churches, from Palestine to Rome. The philosopher has 
been of no less value to us than the Paphlagonian spiritual giant 
and stormy reformer. Justin quotes from memory. He some- 
times quotes much at random. He adds to one book words 
from another. He combines two or three passages into one 
unwittingly. But in all he shows that the gospel history for him 
is precisely the history that we have in our four Gospels ; he has 
nothing to add to it and nothing to take away from it. This cir- 
cumstance is the more noteworthy because we know that he was 
so widely travelled and so well informed. He cannot but have 
known of some of the Gospels that are sometimes named, the 
Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Egyptians, for 
example. But, if he knows of them, he does not bother about 
them. He does not search out for peculiar statements about 
Jesus and the words of Jesus in them in order to lay them before 
us as curiosities. And now it is worth while to observe that 
Justin's writings were probably written before the year 165, his 
Apology before the year 154. The best opinion thus far is that 
he died about the year 165. Supposing that the original ante- 
evangelical book that we conjecture to have been written by 
Matthew was written about the year 67, there would have 
elapsed from it to the year 154 only ninety years. If we regard 
it as likely that Justin became a Christian by the year 133, that 
would have been little more than sixty years, and within those 
sixty years we should have to place the writing and the earliest 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— PAPIAS 97 

using of our four Gospels. That is no large margin of time for 
the preparation of and the spreading abroad of a number of 
unknown books which should have filled the places later held 
by our Gospels. Justin had every chance to know all that was 
before the eyes of Christians in the Roman Empire shortly before 
and ten years after the year 150, and he betrays no knowledge 
of books highly valued by them and neither to-day in our New 
Testament nor known to us. 

Just after referring to the letters of Ignatius, we had occasion 
to speak of certain words that Papias had related as from a 
presbyter John. It is now time to speak of Papias himself. He 
must have been born long before the year ioo, for he was 
apparently an older contemporary of Polycarp, and we may 
suppose that he was born about the year 80. 

He may have been a heathen by birth. His name rather 
points to that. And the name fits well for a boy born at 
Hierapolis. Eusebius speaks slightingly of his mental calibre, 
but we do not need to think less of him on that account. 
Eusebius was one of the cool scientific people who looked back 
to the great Alexandrian and Syrian schools with pride. He had 
little patience with the fancies of the millenarians in Asia Minor. 
Eusebius writes, then (H. E. 3. 39), of Papias in the following strain, 
after he has given various things out of Papias : "And the same 
[writer] adds further other matter as if it had reached him from 
an unwritten tradition, both some strange parables of the Saviour 
and strange teachings of his, and some other things rather of a 
mythical kind. Among which he also says that the kingdom of 
Christ will exist bodily upon this very earth a thousand years 
after the resurrection from the dead. Which I think he assumed 
through misconception of the apostolical explanations, not hav- 
ing himself seen what was told to them mystically in certain 
signs. For he appears to have been exceedingly small in mind, 
as can be put forth so to speak from his own words. Besides, he 
has been the chief cause (Eusebius would say : of the absurd 
opinions) also for the most of those churchly men after him of a 
like opinion with himself, they hiding themselves behind the 
great antiquity of the man, as, for example, Irenaeus, and if there 
is any other that has come to light thinking the like things. 
And he hands down also in his book other discussions of the word 
of the Lord by Aristion, the one above alluded to, and traditions 
7 



98 THE CANON 

of the presbyter John, to which remanding those eager to learn, 
we shall here of necessity add to the former words presented 
[from his book] a tradition which, alluding to Mark who wrote the 
Gospel, is put forth in these words. And this the presbyter said : 
Mark the interpreter of Peter wrote accurately as many things 
as he [Peter] related, yet not in order, of the things said or done 
by the Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed with 
Him, but afterwards as I said with Peter, who gave teachings 
according as they were necessary, but not as setting forth a 
connected system of the Lord's words. So that Mark made no 
mistake, writing down some things thus as he remembered them. 
For he gave attention to one thing, not to leave out anything 
that he heard or to say anything false among what [he gave]." 

Papias' whole neighbourhood was millenarian, and he could 
not suspect that a Church historian two hundred years later would 
throw that up to him. For our purpose Papias' five books, the 
Explanations of the Lord's Sayings, would, we think, be invaluable. 
They may still be found in some corner of the East. Irenseus 
refers thus to the fourth book (Eus. H. E. 3. 39) : " This Papias the 
hearer of John, and the companion of Polycarp. an ancient man, 
testifies in writing in the fourth of his books." "Papias himself, 
however, (Eusebius continues) shows in the preface to his Words 
that he was in no wise himself a hearer and beholder of the holy 
apostles, and he teaches in the following words that he received 
the things of faith from those who were the acquaintances of them : 
1 1 shall not hesitate to weave together with the comments for thee 
such things as I at any time learned well from the elders and kept 
well in memory, since I am convinced of their truth. For I did 
not take pleasure, as most people do, in those who say a great 
deal, but in those that teach the true things ; and not in those who 
relate foreign commandments, but in those [who relate] the 
commandments given to faith by the Lord, and coming from the 
truth itself. If, forsooth, also someone came who had followed 
with the presbyters, I sought after the words of the presbyters ; 
what Andrew, or what Peter said, or what Philip, or what Thomas 
or James, or what John or Matthew, or what any other of the 
disciples of the Lord, and what both Aristion and the presbyter 
John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not account it 
that the things from the books were to me of so much profit as 
the things from a living and remaining voice.' Where also it is 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— PAPIAS 99 

worthy of note, that he counts the name John twice, the former 
of which he combines with Peter and James and Matthew and 
the rest of the apostles, clearly aiming at the evangelist ; and the 
other John, interpunctuating his discourse, he orders among the 
others who are aside from the number of the apostles, putting 
Aristion before him, and he clearly names him a presbyter. 
Thus also by this we have a proof that the history of the two who 
are said to have had the same name is true, and it is also said 
that at Ephesus in Asia there are tombs still to-day for each one 
of the Johns. To which also it is necessary to pay attention. 
For it is likely that the second, unless someone should wish 
that it were the first, saw the revelation that is in our hands said 
to be of John. And this Papias now before us confesses that he 
received the words of the apostles from those who followed with 
them, but says that he himself was an own hearer of Aristion 
and of the presbyter John. Accordingly, often referring to them by 
name in his books, he lays before our view their traditions. And 
this shall not be said to us for no profit. It is also worth while 
to add to the words of Papias presented, other sayings of his in 
which he relates some paradoxical things, and other things as if 
they had reached him by tradition. The fact then that Philip the 
apostle together with his daughters lived at Hierapolis is made 
known by the forefathers. And Papias being at that [place] 
relates that he received a miraculous story from the daughters of 
Philip, which is noteworthy. For he relates that a resurrection of 
a dead man took place in his day, and again another paradoxical 
thing that took place about Justus the one called Barsabas, as 
drinking a poisonous medicine and experiencing nothing dis- 
agreeable by the grace of the Lord." 

Eusebius tells us that Papias quotes First John and First 
Peter, for he is looking up the witnesses for the books that 
are less well attested. He also mentions that Papias has the 
story of the Adulteress, which he says is also in the Gospel of 
the Hebrews. That does not in the least make us sure that 
that story belonged to that Gospel. It may have been thrust 
into it, just as it was thrust into the Gospel of John. The story 
is doubtless good tradition, wherever it started. Irenaeus gives 
us a good view of what was possible in the way of millennial 
exegesis at the hands of a Papias, and we need not remark 
that Irenaeus as a millenarian was well contented with it. 



IOO THE CANON 

Irenaeus quotes (5. 33) the words of Jesus from Matthew : 
" I will not drink henceforth of the fruit of this vine, until 
that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's king- 
dom," and insists upon the earthly, the terrestrial character of 
this kingdom, because real wine could only be drunk by real 
men. After referring to sayings of Jesus touching the rewards 
that those who have done or have suffered for Him shall receive 
in a clearly mundane sphere, he states that the patriarchs had 
a right to look for the fulfilment of the promises to them in a 
solid earthly form, and not in vague heavenly blessings. Here 
he then draws from Papias. " As the presbyters recounted, who 
saw John the disciple of the Lord, that they had heard from him, 
how the Lord used to teach about those days and to say : The 
days will come in which vines shall grow, each one having ten 
thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and 
on each branch again ten thousand twigs, and on each single 
twig ten thousand clusters, and in each single cluster ten thousand 
grapes, and each single grape when pressed shall give twenty-five 
measures of wine. And when any one of the saints shall have 
taken hold of one of the bunches, another will cry out : I am 
a better bunch. Take me. Bless the Lord through me. In 
like manner also a grain of wheat shall bring forth ten thousand 
heads, and each single head will have ten thousand grains, and 
each single grain will give five double pounds of fine pure 
flour. And the rest, apples and seeds and grass, according to 
the same manner. And all the animals using these things for 
food which are received from the earth will become peaceful and 
ready each in its place, subject to men in all subjection. And 
those things also Papias the hearer of John and the companion 
of Polycarp, an ancient man, testifies in writing in the fourth of 
his books. For he put together five books. And he added 
saying : These things are credible to those who believe. And 
Judas, he said, the traitor not believing but asking : How then 
shall such growths be brought about by the Lord ? the Lord said : 
Those will see who shall come to these [times]." 

We can easily imagine how Eusebius, who was no millenarian, 
despised a writer who delighted in these fancies; but we shall 
nevertheless not regard these fancies as enough to put Papias into 
the class of weak-minded men. Papias was clearly a wideawake 
man, ready and eager to learn from any and every source. Can 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— PAPIAS 1 01 

we form any judgment as to what the sayings of the Lord were 
about which Papias wrote his comments ? Put the question differ- 
ently. Does anything that we learned in Eusebius or in Irenseus 
about Papias and about his comments give us a chance to suspect 
that in those five books he considered words of Jesus that are not 
to be found in our Gospels ? Were his comments framed upon 
the Gospel to the Hebrews, or on the Gospel to the Egyptians, 
or were they based upon all sorts and descriptions of single sayings 
of Jesus that he had gathered together ? We have no reason to 
think of anything of that kind. How eagerly would Eusebius 
have told us of the contents of the book had that been its 
description ! How would Anastasius of Sinai in the sixth century 
have revelled in a book with new words of Jesus ! No. Papias' 
book may well have here and there reproduced an unknown 
saying of Jesus, as, for example, in the supposed reply to Judas 
a moment ago. But his five books were probably a collection 
of all manner of traditions out of those early years which would 
answer many a question that we should like to have answered, 
but give us twice as many new questions to answer. 

Papias' Comments will probably in no special way increase 
our knowledge of the direct words of Jesus. But we should like 
to have them nevertheless. The importance of Papias for the 
criticism of the use of the books of the New Testament lies not 
only in his having lived before the death of the Apostle John, 
and in his having lived until the middle or ten years after 
the middle of the second century. That stretch of years is 
extremely interesting, it is true, but Polycarp has already given 
us the beginning of the period and carried us well towards the 
end of it. Papias' weight for us is increased because he comes 
from another and that an important town, Hierapolis, in another 
province, Phrygia, and indeed from a town that has for us an- 
other trifling memory of interest. 

For the evangelist Philip, one of the seven chosen in the 
sixth chapter of Acts, and who in the twenty-first chapter was 
at Csesarea, after went to Hierapolis and died and was buried 
there ; and Papias appears to have seen Philip's daughters with his 
own eyes. That is a new proof for the way in which Christians 
travelled in those days, and a new hook for the fastening of the 
genuineness of the books and of the lives of the apostles and of 
the followers of the apostles. It is not the case that a great gap 



102 THE CANON 

separates the time of Paul from the time of Papias, for example. 
The years were closely interwoven with the threads of human 
lives. Paul staved several days in Philip's house at Caesarea, and 
Philip's four prophesying, virgin daughters must then have been 
more than mere children, else they would not have prophesied. 
At least two of the daughters and perhaps all four lived later 
with Philip at Hierapolis. Can we suppose that they forgot that 
Paul had spent several days at their house at Caesarea? They 
may well have spoken of Paul to Papias, if Papias when he saw 
them was more than a little boy. This is not to be called playing 
with earnest things. This is scientific consideration of the facts of 
personal intercourse, which go to connect the earliest period of 
Christianity with the beginnings of a more definitely tangible 
and in a literary way more firmly based history in the middle of 
the second century. Whether or not Philip had seen Jesus, we 
do not know. It is possible that he had seen Him. It is further 
to be kept in mind that Papias was not a mere lay member of 
the Church at Hierapolis, but its bishop, one, therefore, who will 
have had every opportunity and every right to have searched out 
carefully all the memories of the past in those circles. 

Papias refers to presbyters, to elders who had furnished him 
with valuable information from former times. That was due and 
proper tradition. We have a similar reference to presbyters in 
Irenaeus, and it will be worth our while to see what these 
presbyters to whom Irenaeus refers have to tell us touching the 
books of the New Testament. Irenaeus writes, for example : 
" As I heard from a certain presbyter, who had heard from those 
who had seen the apostles and from those who had learned (who 
had themselves been apostles ?) : that for the older circles in the 
case of things which they did without the counsel of the spirit, 
the blame was enough which was taken from the Scriptures. For 
since God is no respecter of persons, He placed a fitting blame 
on things not done according to His decree." After giving 
examples from David and Solomon, Irenaeus continues: "The 
scripture bore hard in upon him, as the presbyter said, so that no 
flesh may boast in the sight of the Lord. And that for this reason 
the Lord went down to the parts below the earth, preaching the 
gospel of His coming also to them, there being a remission of 
sins for those who believe on Him. But their deeds — the deeds 
of the great ones of the Old Testament — were written for our 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— PAPIAS 103 

correction, that we should know first of all that our God and 
theirs is one, whom sins do not please, even when they are done 
by great men ; and in the next place that we refrain from evils. 
We should not therefore say that the elders were proud, nor 
should we blame those of old times, but ourselves fear, lest by 
chance after having recognised Christ, doing something that does 
not please God, we should have no further remission of our 
offences, but should be shut out from His kingdom. And that 
therefore Paul said : For if He did not spare the natural branches, 
lest He by chance spare not thee, who being a wild olive was 
inserted in the fat olive and wast made a companion of its 
fatness : and similarly seeing that the prevarications of the people 
are described, not because of those who then transgressed, but 
for our correction, and that we should know that it is one and 
the same God against whom they then used to sin, and against 
whom some now sin who say that they have believed. And that 
the apostle had most clearly shown this in the Epistle to the 
Corinthians, saying : I would not that ye should be ignorant . . . 
let him see to it that he fall not." 

" The presbyters used to show that those were very senseless 
who from the things which happened to those who of old 
did not obey God, try to introduce another father." This 
is evidently pointed at men who like Marcion condemned 
the cruelty of the God of the Old Testament and explained 
that the New Testament and Christ proceeded from a totally 
different God who is a loving Father. Irenaeus proceeds 
with the presbyters : " On the contrary, placing over against that 
how great things the Lord's coming had done for the purpose of 
saving those who received Him, pitying them. But remaining 
silent as to His judgment and as to what shall happen to those 
who have heard His words and have not done them, and that it 
were better for them if they had never been born, and that it will 
be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorra in the judgment than 
for that city which did not receive the word of His disciples." 
Against similar deprecation of theft commanded by the God of 
the Old Testament another passage is directed : " Who, moreover, 
blame it and reckon it [for evil] that the people when about to 
set out, by the command of God received vessels of all kinds, and 
robes from the Egyptians, and thus departed, from which things 
also the tabernacle was made in the desert, not knowing the 



104 THE CANON 

justifications of God and His arrangements they prove themselves 
[bad] as also the presbyter used to say." 

Another passage aims at the same false views, and brings 
a phrase that particularly interests us : " In the same manner 
also the presbyter, the disciple of the apostles, used to dis- 
course about the two Testaments, showing that they were both 
from one and the same God. For neither was there another 
God besides Him that made and shaped us, nor had the words 
of those any foundation who say that this world which is in 
our day was made by angels or by some other power or by 
some other God." The calling the presbyter a disciple of the 
apostles is probably a slip of Irenaeus', or it may be of his trans- 
lator's, for this is only extant in Latin. The great point here for 
our purpose is that Irenaeus makes the presbyter speak of the two 
Testaments, that is to say of the Old and the New Testament. 
This fits in with what we shall in a moment relate about 
Melito of Sardes. Unfortunately, however, in an account of this 
remote kind we cannot tell whether the presbyter himself really 
used the expression Testaments or not. He may have used it. 
But it is (i) presbyter, (2) Irenaeus, (3) translator before it reaches 
us. In another place Irenaeus does not write the word presbyter, 
but " one of those who went before " : " And as a certain one of 
those who went before said, [Christ] by the (divine) stretching 
forth of His hands was bringing the two peoples together to the 
one God." That is a beautiful thought for the crucifixion. 

In another passage we simply have an unknown earlier 
author whom Irenaeus quotes, how much earlier does not ap- 
pear. " God does all things in measure and in order, and there 
is with Him nothing unmeasured, because there is nothing 
unnumbered. And someone said well that the unmeasured 
Father Himself is measured in the Son. For the' Son is a measure 
of the Father, since He also receives Him." Once Irenaeus says 
that the earlier Christians were better than those of his day : 
" Wherefore those who were before us and indeed much better 
than we, nevertheless could not sufficiently reply to those who 
were of the school of Valentinus." Our Lord's age Irenaeus 
knows from tradition : " But that the first age of thirty years is 
the youthful disposition and reached up to the fortieth year, 
everyone will agree. From the fortieth, however, and the fiftieth 
year it declines already towards the older age, in possession of 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— POLYCARP 1 05 

which our Lord used to teach as the Gospel and all the presbyters 
testify, who came together with John the disciple of the Lord in 
Asia, that John handed this down." It is likely that the source 
for these references of Irenaeus to the presbyters was Polycarp. 
" But certain of them saw not only John, but also other apostles ; 
and they heard these same things from them, and witness to an 
account of this kind." All this shows us the living fulness of 
these years for the Christians. It is totally false to suppose that 
the books of the New Testament were during all these years 
living a merely tentative life, and that they were not in the 
common possession of the mass of Christians. 

Polycarp was bishop at Smyrna, Papias was bishop at 
Hierapolis, Melito was bishop at Sardes. We mention him 
here in the post-apostolic age as standing near to the other two 
earlier bishops with whom he probably had much to do. Melito 
presented his Apology to Marcus Antoninus probably in the year 
176, but other writings of his are of an earlier time. Onesimus 
asked Melito to make what we might call an anthology, a bunch 
of flowers, from the Law and the Prophets touching the Saviour 
and the faith in general, and apparently asked him to give what 
we might name an introduction to the Old Testament, that is to 
say, some explanations, presumably for Christians who had been 
originally heathen, about the old books. Melito took the matter 
seriously and went to the East to make researches about the books 
and the events. " Melito to Onesimus the brother, greetings. 
Since thou often didst in thy zeal for the word demand that 
selections should be made both from the Law and the Prophets 
about the Saviour and all our faith, and thou, moreover, didst 
earnestly take counsel to learn the details about the old books, 
how many their number and what their order might be, I hasten 
to do this, understanding thy zeal for the faith and thy love for 
learning about the word, and because thou placest before all 
things these questions in thy longing towards God, striving for 
eternal salvation. Having therefore gone to the East and reached 
the place where [it all] was preached and came to pass, and 
having learned exactly the books of the Old Testament, I have 
sent a list of them." Of course when Onesimus asked about 
the old books, he must have had new books also in mind. And 
when Melito sent him a list of the Old Testament books, he must 
have thought of a New Testament as the other side. But we 



106 THE CANON 

have no list of New Testament books from him, although we 
know that he wrote a book on the Revelation. 

After the list of the books Melito said to Onesimus : " From 
which also I made the selections, dividing them into six books." 
I confess to a certain surprise in the thought that Melito of 
Sardes really went to Palestine in order to search out the names 
of the books of the Old Testament and to make the selections 
from them. I had altogether forgotten that he thus appears to 
show that the books of the Old Testament were not in their 
entirety at his command in Sardes. To reflect upon the matter, 
I have been inclined to think that in the larger synagogues in the 
great cities of the Roman Empire the Jews had in their hands, as 
a rule, all or the most of the books of the Old Testament. It is 
true that Melito's case does not directly clash with this thought, 
since it would have been possible, conceivable, that at Melito's 
day the authorities in a Jewish synagogue would refuse to show 
their holy books to a Christian bishop. Yet possible as this may 
be, I do not regard it as likely. The Jews are not known as book 
concealers. I am the rather inclined to assume that Melito's 
words find their point in the two thoughts, first that the number 
of the books was differently given by different Jews ; and second, 
that Melito wished both for authoritative certainty as to the 
number, which he thought most properly to be sought in 
the East, and for an authoritative text from which to make the 
selections desired by Onesimus. Further, I think that the greater 
knowledge of the exegete who has been upon the ground, was a 
special object of Melito's in his journey. In any case we must 
use this lateral testimony of Melito's to repress our inclination to 
think that each great Christian Church must have of necessity 
had a complete set of the books of the Old Testament. The 
great Churches will probably have had the Law and the 
Prophets and the Psalms. It is not impossible that many a 
Jewish synagogue in the diaspora had no more of the Old 
Testament than this. 

Melito seems to have been a very prolific writer for his time, 
although but little has been preserved to our day. We find in 
his writings quotations from all the books of the New Testament 
save James and Jude and Second and Third John. He gives 
(Fragm. 15) a summary of the life of Jesus in his book on Faith, 
He writes with an impetus : " From the Law and the Prophets 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE— MELITO 107 

we gather those things which are foretold of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, so that we may demonstrate to your charity that He is 
the perfect mind, the Word of God. It is He Himself who 
was born before the light, He Himself is the Creator with the 
Father, He Himself is the former of man, He Himself it is who 
was all things in all : it is He who was the Patriarch in the 
patriarchs, in the law the Law, among the priests the Chief Priest, 
among the kings the Ruler, among prophets the Prophet, among 
Angels the Archangel, in voice the Word, among spirits the Spirit, 
in the Father the Son, in God God, King to the ages of ages. 
For this is He who to Noah was the Pilot, He who led 
Abraham, He who was bound with Isaac, He who wandered 
with Jacob, He who was sold with Joseph, He who was Leader 
with Moses, He who with Joshua the son of Nun distributed the 
inheritance, He who through David and the prophets foretold 
His sufferings : He who in the Virgin became incarnate, He 
who was born at Bethlehem, He who was swathed in swaddling- 
bands in the cradle, He who was seen by the shepherds, He 
who was praised by the angels, He who was worshipped by the 
wise men, He who was heralded by John, He who gathered 
together the apostles, He who preached the kingdom, He 
who healed the lame, He who gave light to the blind, He who 
raised the dead, He who was seen in the temple, He who was 
not believed in by the people, He who was betrayed by Judas, 
He who was seized by the priests, He who was judged by Pilate, 
He who with nails was fixed to the cross, He who was hung 
Mpon the wood, He who was buried in the earth, He who rose 
/rom the dead, He who appeared to the apostles, He who was 
borne above to heaven, He who sits at the right hand of the 
Father, He who is the Rest of the dead, the Finder of the lost, 
the Light of those who are in darkness, the Redeemer of captives, 
the Guide of the erring, the Refuge of the mourning, the Bride- 
groom of the Church, the Charioteer of the cherubim, the Chief 
of the army of the angels, God of God, Son from the Father, 
Jesus Christ King to the ages. Amen." We feel as we read that, 
that Melito had at least in general our New Testament books. 
His summing up brings no element that is strange to us. 

We have passed by the middle of the second century. The 
time of the Old Catholic Church is at hand. Christianity is 
consolidating itself. Among orthodox Christians, among the 



IOS THE CANON 

general body of Christians in the great Church, there is nothing 
like the violent rending into two parties which was suggested by 
some scholars in the former century, the nineteenth century. It 
has sometimes been suggested that Papias, whose writings give 
very little from Paul, was an opponent of Paul. I should rather 
take it that Papias did not fully comprehend the difference 
between his point of view and that of Paul. And I regard it as 
likely that the fact that we do not see Paul's writings in his text, 
depends in a large measure upon his dreamy fanciful way of 
thinking and writing that had no special hold in Pauline Epistles. 
The Church is essentially one, aside from the great sects, aside 
from Gnostics, and Marcionists, and Montanists, let us say. But 
the size of the Church begins to be appreciable. The Christians 
feel more and more strongly how many men there are, east and 
west and north and south, for whom they are in a measure 
responsible, whose opinions are charged to them. And they see 
in the growing sects a danger for themselves, a danger for the 
Church. The natural simplicity of the first Christian Church is 
gone beyond recall. The Churches have already certainly some- 
times, like the Church at Smyrna, begun to pray for "peace for 
the Churches through all the world." 

During this period Christianity has had the great task of 
expansion. It had had the duty laid upon it to go out into all 
the world and preach and baptize and make disciples. It had 
through all these years the need of defending itself, of holding 
its ground against the Jews. But that task has gradually begun 
to vanish. The Jews have no longer their determining import 
for the position and acceptance of the Christian communities on 
the great roads of the Roman Empire. Here and there in 
remoter corners a little of the old combination of Jew and 
Christian confuses the gaze of officials from time to time. That 
is all. Christianity has ever in increasing measure found itself 
compelled to justify and declare itself over against heathenism. 
Now an official was suspicious, now one was curious, now one 
was indifferent, now one was overbearing and cruel. For all 
their duties the Christians found that the written word was the 
least important thing for them. Their first and great duty, the 
preaching, was the continuation of the preaching of the apostles. 
And that was anything and everything but preaching from texts. 
It was the heralding of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of the 



THE POST-APOSTOLIC AGE IO9 

heavens. It was the preaching of the Son of Man, the Son of 
God. This preaching was not preaching upon the Gospels or 
out of the Gospels or about the Gospels. It was a Gospel itself. 
It was such a segment of a Gospel as the time and the place 
permitted the speaker to lay before his hearers. As for the 
apostles, the Christians busied themselves less with their words 
and more with their thoughts. The Greek language, the 
common language of the Roman Empire, played its part in all 
this. It was the language of the greater number of the 
preachers. In it the books of the New Testament were first 
written. Most of all the Christians asked about the facts, the 
events of the life of Jesus, less about the notes that had been 
written down about that life. 

But that is beginning to change. The written reports are 
beginning to excite more interest. The power of tradition by 
word of mouth is fading gradually away. We see thus far, if 
we close our eyes to the rough work of Marcion, nothing that 
looks like the exercise of careful critical judgment in efforts to 
determine the nature of Christian writings or their origin or their 
value for the Church, or their possible danger for the minds of 
the unlearned. No one has thus far come forth with the assumed 
or with the imposed mission to settle questions about books that 
should be used for one purpose or another. Marcion alone has 
taken up these points for his followers, but that is of no interest 
for the rest of the Christians. The books have had to care for 
themselves, to make their own way, fight their own battles, lead 
their own retreats. That does not, however, in the least mean, 
that the early Christians took, hit or miss without looking at it 
twice, any book that was thrust into their hands. Far from it. 
The first books arose in small circles in which each man knew 
each other. None needed to ask who brought forward the given 
book. Everyone saw and knew whence the book came. If the 
book came from afar, from Rome to Corinth or to Ephesus or 
to Tarsus or to Antioch, each Christian knew again who had 
brought it, and whence he had brought it, and why he had 
brought it. 

Little by little during all this post-apostolic age the written 
treasures of the Churches had been growing and gathering. The 
great Churches in the great cities on the great roads of travel 
will have at a very early time gotten by far the larger part 



IIO THE CANON 

of what we now have in the New Testament. City after city 
and Church after Church will have sent in its contribution to the 
list. In the provinces and in the villages the process will have 
spread but slowly. There was too little money and too little 
education to secure for the small places for decades that which 
had long been in the hands of the large Churches. The same 
influence wrought in a like manner in reference to other books, 
to books that were not to the same degree acceptable to the 
Churches. A certain uncertainty and a vacillating determination 
will here and there have played a part in helping a book upwards 
into the more treasured, or downwards into the less favoured 
regions of Christian literary liking. No authority saw to the due 
criticism. The book rose or fell. It was more used, it was less 
used. But one thing was gradually going forth from the process 
of writing and of preserving and of valuing the books, and 
that was the general acceptance of the mass of the books of 
the New Testament as books that were of peculiar value to 
Christians. This peculiar value showed itself in their being 
placed with or even placed before the books of the Old 
Testament. The equality of the two series of books came 
most distinctly to view in the public services of the Churches. 
On the other hand, the lack of value that showed itself in the 
case of other books, was seen more clearly than anywhere 
else in the fact that these other books were not allowed 
in the public services of the Churches to claim for themselves 
the first rank, to reach the point at which they could be read 
at the chief place in the Church as the expression of words 
which God had to say to Men. 



Ill 



III. 

THE A GE OF IREN& US. 

160-200. 

In the post-apostolic age we found Christians from widely 
distant lands meeting and crossing each other's paths, and 
giving witness on one side and on the other to the oneness 
of the great body of Christians, to the undisturbed sequence 
of Christian tradition, and to the silently presupposed existence 
of the more important books of the New Testament. The 
period to which we now direct our gaze will uphold the character 
of early Christianity in respect to widely spread Churches, and 
in respect to men of letters who journeyed afar, and who were 
therefore able to give practical examples of ecclesiastical unity, 
who in their journeys did much to knit more closely the bonds 
of fellowship which united the Churches to each other, and 
who in their discussions or in their works did much to prepare 
or to usher in the first great literary and scientific period of 
the growing Church. We have therefore to do especially with 
Hegesippus who carries us to Palestine but does not leave us 
there, to Tatian who draws our eyes towards Syria only to 
send us back to the West, to a curious fragment of a list of 
the books of the New Testament, to the Bishop Dionysius 
of Corinth and to the Bishop Pinytus of Cnossus on the Island 
of Crete, to Athenagoras of Athens, then to the East again to 
the Bishop Theophilus of Antioch, then far to the West to 
the letter written by the Churches of Vienne and Lyons in 
Gaul. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, binds the East to the 
West, for he came from Smyrna. A heathen named Celsus 
will call for a word or two. And we must cast a glance 
at one and the other of the versions into which the early 
Church translated her sacred books so as to make them more 
easily accessible in wider circles. 



112 THE CANON 

Hegesippus is a very interesting man, and he will be still 
more interesting when someone draws forth his book from 
a Syrian or an Armenian or a Coptic library. He was probably 
born in Palestine. Eusebius, referring to his use of Semitic 
languages, adds : " showing that he himself had come to the 
faith from the Hebrews." Sometimes people have proceeded 
from that observation of Eusebius to reason that Hegesippus 
was a rabid Jew of the Ebionitic Christian group. There is, 
however, not only no proof of anything of that kind, but there 
is plenty to show that precisely the opposite was the case. 
For we shall see that he was a Christian in good and regular 
standing, and that he ever bore himself accordingly. He should 
by rights have been born at an early date, seeing that 
Eusebius declares that he " was of the first succession of the 
apostles." That phrase cannot, however, well be taken very 
exactly, unless — what no one reports — Hegesippus lived to 
be extremely old. Hegesippus is the author who has given 
us at length the story of the martyrdom of James the brother 
of Jesus, and I shall give it here as a guarantee for Hegesippus' 
knowledge of the early Church, but as well as an example of 
the Jewish character of the Christianity of James and of his 
friend the Apostle Paul, who had taken a vow at Jerusalem 
a few years before, but escaped immediate death owing to his 
Roman citizenship. 

James showed himself a man (Eus. H. E. 2. 23): "The 
brother of the Lord, James, receives the Church in succession 
with the apostles, the one who was by all called the Just from 
the times of the Lord till our day, since many were called James. 
This one was holy from his mother's womb. He drank no wine 
nor spirits, nor did he eat meat. A razor did not go up upon 
his head, he did not anoint himself with oil, and he used no 
bath. For him alone it was allowed to go into the Holies. For 
he wore no wool but only linen, and he alone went into the 
temple, and was found lying on his knees, and begging for the 
remission [of the sins] of the people, so that his knees were 
hardened off like the knees of a camel, because of his ever 
bending them praying to God and begging remission for the 
people. And by reason of the exceeding greatness of his 
righteousness he was called Just, and Oblias, which in Greek is 
bulwark of the people and righteousness, as the prophets make 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— HEGESIPPUS 113 

plain touching him." Here I must make a parenthesis. In 
another place (Eus. H. E. 4. 22) Hegesippus tells about seven 
heresies or diverse opinions among the Jews, and this I must put 
here : " And there were different opinions in the circumcision 
among the sons of Israel, of which these were against the tribe of 
Judah and of the Christ : Essaeans, Galilaeans, Hemerobaptists, 
Masbotheans, Samaritans, Sadducees, Pharisees." 

Now we go back to the story of James : " Some, then, of the 
seven heresies among the people, of those that I wrote of above 
in these memoirs, inquired of him what the door of Jesus was. 
And he said this was the Saviour. From which circumstance some 
believed that Jesus is the Christ. And the aforesaid heresies 
believed not that there is a resurrection, or that each man 
will have to return [judgment] according to his works. But 
as many as believed, it was because of James. Many then 
also of the rulers believing, there was a tumult of the Jews 
and scribes and Pharisees saying, that the whole people is 
in danger of awaiting Jesus the Christ. Therefore coming 
together with James, they said : We beg you, hold the people 
back, since it is going astray to Jesus, as if He were the Christ. 
We beseech thee to persuade all those coming to the Day of 
the Passover, about Jesus. For all obey thee. For we bear 
witness to thee, and all the people [bears witness] that thou 
art just, and that thou dost not respect persons. Persuade thou, 
then, the people not to go astray about Jesus. For all the people 
and we all obey thee. Stand, therefore, on the pinnacle of 
the temple, so that thou mayest be visible from above, and that 
thy words may be readily heard by all the people. For on 
account of the Passover all the tribes have come together, 
also with the Gentiles. So the aforesaid scribes and Pharisees 
stood James upon the pinnacle of the temple, and cried to him 
and said : O Just One, whom we all ought to obey, since the 
people goes astray behind Jesus the crucified, announce to us 
what the door of Jesus is. And he answered with a loud voice : 
Why do you ask me about Jesus the Son of Man, and He is 
seated in Heaven at the right hand of the Great Power, and 
He is going to come upon the clouds of Heaven. And many 
were receiving these words and rejoicing at the testimony of 
James, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David. Then again 
the same scribes and Pharisees said to each other : We did 
8 



114 THE CANON 

ill affording such a testimony for Jesus. But let us go up 
and throw him down, so that fearing they may not believe in 
him. And they all cried : O ! O ! even the Just One has 
gone astray. And they fulfilled the scripture written in Isaiah : 
Let us take away the Just One, for he is unprofitable to us. 
Therefore they shall eat the fruits of their w r orks. And going 
up they cast down the Just One, and said to each other : Let 
us stone James the Just. And they began to stone him, since 
in falling down he had not died. But turning he kneeled saying : 
I beseech thee, Lord God Father, forgive them : for they know 
not what they do. And thus they stoning him, one of the 
priests, of the sons of Rechab the son of Rachabim of those 
witnessed to by Jeremiah the prophet, cried, saying: Stop! 
What do ye ? The Just One is praying for you. And one of them 
took a fuller's bar with which they beat the garments, and 
brought it down on the head of the Just One. And thus he 
became a martyr. And they buried him in the place by the 
temple, and his pillar still remains there by the temple. This 
one became a true martyr both to Jews and Greeks, that Jesus 
is the Christ. And immediately Vespasian besieges them." 

That shows us how the early Christians lived and died, and how 
well Hegesippus knew about them. That is taken from the fifth 
book of his Memoirs. But Eusebius shows us in another passage 
that Hegesippus also saw and wrote of what the heathen did. 
Eusebius (H. E. 4. 7, 8) recounts the heathen Gnostics, and ob- 
serves : " Nevertheless then the truth again brought up, against 
these whom we have mentioned, and set in the midst of the fray 
several of her champions, warring against the godless heresies not 
alone by unwritten debates but also by written proofs. Among 
these Hegesippus was well known, from whom we have already 
quoted many sayings, as presenting from his traditions some things 
from the times of the apostles. So then this [Hegesippus] in 
five books giving the memoirs of the unerring tradition of the 
apostolic preaching in the most simple order of writing, notes 
for the time alluded to (or for the time that he knew about) 
touching those who at the beginning founded the idols, writing 
about in this way : To which they set up cenotaphs and temples 
as up to this day, among whom is also Antinous the slave of 
the Emperor Hadrian, where also the Antinous game is held, 
lasting up to our time, for he also built a city named for 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— HEGESIPPUS 1 1 5 

Antinous, and (instituted?) prophets." Eusebius (H. E. 4. 21) 
shows us how highly he valued Hegesippus by the list in which 
he places him at the head in referring to that time : "And there 
flourished at that time in the Church not only Hegesippus whom 
we know from what was said above, but also Dionysius the bishop 
of the Corinthians, and Pinytus another bishop of the Christians 
in Crete, and, further, Philip and Apolinarius and Melito, both 
Musanos and Modestus, and above all Irenseus, from [all of] 
whom also the orthodoxy of the apostolical tradition of the sound 
faith has come down to us in writing. Hegesippus therefore, 
in the five [books of] Memoirs which have reached us, has left 
behind him a very full minute of his own opinion, in which 
he sets forth that he held converse with a great many bishops 
on his journey as far as Rome, and that he received from all 
the same teaching. It is fitting to hear him, after he has said 
something about the letter of Clement to the Corinthians, adding 
the following : And the Church of the Corinthians held fast 
to the sound word until Primus who was bishop in Corinth, 
among whom I conversed as I sailed to Rome, and I spent 
no few days with the Corinthians, during which we were refreshed 
with the sound word. And coming to Rome, I stayed there 
till the time of Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. And 
Soter followed Anicetus, after whom Eleutherus. And in each 
bishopric and in each city things are as the Law heralds and 
the prophets and the Lord." Observe Hegesippus' expression. 
Everything is in order in all the bishops' sees and cities that 
he has visited, because it all agrees with what the Law demands 
and the prophets and the Lord. He does not speak of the 
New Testament books. The Law and the Prophets are books. 
But he does not place other books over against them but simply 
the Lord, and that is, what the Lord said. 

Hegesippus (Eus. H. E. 4. 22) gives us further word of 
what happened in the earliest Church at Jerusalem, and de- 
scribes the first steps of unsound doctrine. "And the same 
[Hegesippus] describes the beginnings of the heresies of his 
day in these words : and after James the Just had died as 
martyr with the very same saying as the Lord," — that was, 
the : Father forgive them : for they know not what they do, — 
"again Simeon the son of his uncle Clopas was appointed 
bishop, whom all pressed forward as being the second cousin 



Il6 THE CANON 

of the Lord. Therefore they called the Church a virgin. For 
it was not yet corrupted with empty speeches. But Thebouthis 
begins to corrupt it because he was not made bishop, being from 
the seven heresies (and he was among the people), from whom 
was Simon, whence the Simonians, and Cleobios, whence the 
Cleobians, and Dositheus, whence the Dositheans, and Gorthaeus, 
whence the Gorathenians, and Masbotheus, whence the 
Masbotheans. From these the Menandrianists and Marcionists, 
and Carpocratians and Valentinians, and Basilidians and 
Satornilians, each separately and for themselves introduced 
their own view. From these [came] false Christs, false prophets, 
false apostles, who divided the unity of the Church with corrupt 
words against God and against His Christ." 

No one can say that Hegesippus was not awake to the move- 
ments of the times. His journey to Rome fell in between the 
years 157 and 168, seeing that it was under Anicetus, but he 
seems to have remained there or to have been there again, in 
case he moved about among the cities of the West, until some- 
where between 177 and 190 during the time of Eleutherus. 
It was under Eleutherus that he wrote his Memoirs. He is 
said to have died under Commodus, and that is to be under- 
stood as between the years 180 and 192. Eusebius uses 
Hegesippus as a witness for the condition of affairs in Corinth 
at the time that the letter of Clement was written, and gives 
us at the same time a glimpse of the conditions of exchanging 
or distributing books among the Churches. After referring 
to Clement, Eusebius (H. E. 3. 16) says: "It is well known 
then that a single letter of this Clement is in our hands, 
both great and wonderful, which is represented as from the 
Church of the Romans to the Church of the Corinthians, 
there having been just then an uproar at Corinth. We know 
that this letter was also used publicly before the assembly in 
very many Churches, not only in old times, but also in our 
own very day. And that at the time aforesaid the things of 
the uproar of the Corinthians were stirred up, Hegesippus is 
a sufficient witness." Hegesippus had, as we saw above, spent 
some time at Corinth, and had learned, therefore, all about this 
letter and the conditions there. We cannot at all tell from 
all the stray fragments of Hegesippus' Memoirs that are before 
us what kind of a book these Memoirs were. They cannot 



THE AGE OF IREN.EUS— HEGESIPPUS WJ 

have been a chronologically disposed history, because we are 
directly told that the story about the death of James given 
above was in the fifth book, whereas James stood at the 
beginning of the Church. 

We have given much from Hegesippus that does not bear 
directly upon the criticism of the canon, but which was calculated 
to give us insight into the character, position, advantages, and 
information of the man. It seems to me to be clear that few 
men of all that time can have been in so good a position to give 
us in words and without words a notion of the attitude of the 
Christians towards the books of the New Testament. In the 
first place, Eusebius (H. E. 4. 22) gives us a few words about 
Hegesippus : " And he writes many other things, part of which 
we have already mentioned above, putting them exactly where 
they belonged in the times of the history. And he not only 
gives us some things from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, 
but also from the Syrian and especially from the Hebrew 
dialect, showing that he himself became a believer from among 
the Hebrews. And he refers to other things as if from a 
Jewish unwritten tradition. And not only this one [Hegesippus], 
but also Irenaeus and the whole chorus of the ancients called 
the proverbs of Solomon all glorious wisdom. And speaking of 
the books called apocryphal, he relates that some of them were 
falsely concocted in his times by some heretics." Here we have 
an account of certain sources from which Hegesippus drew. 

He used the Gospel to the Hebrews. That is, of course, 
the book to which reference has been so often made. The 
connection makes it quite clear that Eusebius regards it as a 
book written in a Semitic language. It is probably not the 
little collection of the sayings of Jesus that Matthew made, 
but another book more like a full Gospel ; and it is quite 
possible that the name has misled Eusebius, and that the 
Gospel as Hegesippus knew it was a Greek Gospel and not in 
the Aramaic tongue. Then Eusebius says that Hegesippus 
quotes some things from the Syrian and especially from the 
Hebrew dialect. What can these two be ? The Syriac so close 
upon the Gospel to the Hebrews might be a Syriac Gospel, and 
the Hebrew dialect also points to a Gospel. But I am upon the 
whole not inclined to think that that is the meaning. The 
sentence bristles with Semitic wisdom, and it would not have 



I I 8 THE CANON 

been in the least out of the way for Eusebius, the bishop of 
Caesarea in Palestine, to have had some knowledge of Syrian and 
Aramaic. If we tried to distinguish between the Syriac and the 
Hebrew dialect, we should be forced to suggest that the Syriac 
was perhaps a North-Syrian dialect, say from the district near 
Aleppo, and that the Hebrew dialect, as no one then spoke 
Hebrew, was the Aramean used at and near Jerusalem, which 
had itself a century or two before come down from northern 
Syria. But I do not think for a moment that Hegesippus has in 
view a Syrian or a Hebrew Gospel in the two latter expressions. 
Had he given " some things " from the Gospel according to the 
Hebrews and some things from a Syriac Gospel and some things 
from a Hebrew Gospel, it is scarcely conceivable that he should 
not have given some characteristic traits from the words and 
deeds of Jesus which are not to be found in our Gospels. And 
it is as little conceivable that a mass of such material should 
have been passed in utter silence by Eusebius, who is ever on the 
watch for new things. 

Instead of wishing that we had no one knows what from 
those "Gospels," we only need to take the matter up from 
the other end and ask ourselves what Eusebius really gives us 
from Hegesippus. And we may feel sure that the things which 
Eusebius found worth transferring from Hegesippus' pages to 
his own were at least in part things that he drew from the 
Syrian and Hebrew that Eusebius mentions with such impressive- 
ness. If there were any Christians anywhere who' used a 
Semitic dialect that could by some play of fancy, according to 
the inaccuracy of all these dialect designations in Semitic 
countries, be called a Hebrew dialect, it was the Christians in 
southern Palestine, the Christians in Jerusalem, or those ex- 
pelled from Jerusalem and living as they could somewhere in that 
neighbourhood. What has Eusebius drawn from Hegesippus 
that might be taken from such a source? Precisely the story 
of the death of James. There is "something" that may have 
come from the Syrian or the Hebrew, let us say from the 
Aramean of Judah. James and his followers are the Jewish 
Christians by way of eminence. But I am actually going to give 
another long quotation from Hegesippus. The story of James' 
death brought the tradition of the New Testament squarely down 
to the year 70. After James' death : " Straightway Vespasian 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— HEGESIPPUS 1 19 

besieges them." The passage that I am going to give now 
stretches this tradition down about to the end of the century, 
perhaps over into the beginning of the second century ; and this 
is, again, a passage that must have come from Jerusalem, that 
could have come from nowhere else, and that, therefore, was 
probably from the Hebrew dialect. We shall see how the meshes 
of the net of tradition are being woven more and more securely 
together. There will probably in the end be no place for a book 
to slip through to get away from the grasp of the Church. Before 
I begin the story from Hegesippus I must call attention to the 
fact that the persons to whom our attention is first to be called 
are the descendants of Jude. The Epistle of Jude interests us. 
It interests us to know that down to the second century there 
were men of his family in view and known. 

Hegesippus (Eus. H. E. 3. 20) says : " And there were still 
left some from the family of the Lord, grandsons of Jude, of 
the one called His brother according to the flesh, who were 
charged by hostile men with being of the family of David." 
A moment before Eusebius had said that it was some of the 
heretics who accused them of being of the family of David and 
of the family of the Christ. Hegesippus continues : " These, 
then, Ivocatus led to the Emperor Domitian. For he feared 
the coming of Christ just as Herod did" — that points to the 
second chapter of Matthew — " and he asked them if they were 
from David, and they said Yes. Then he asked them what pos- 
sessions they had or how much money they were masters of." — 
He clearly wished to know whether they would be in a position 
to pay for troops and to bribe people in general to help them. — 
" And they both said they only had nine thousand denars, half 
belonging to each of them. And they said, this they had in 
money, but in the reckoning up of the land they had only thirty- 
nine acres, and that the taxes had to come out of that, and that 
they made their living cultivating the land themselves. Then 
also they showed their hands, the hardness of their body being 
a witness for their working themselves, and showing the wales 
imprinted on their own hands from the unceasing labour. And 
when they were asked about the Christ and His kingdom, of 
what kind it would be and where and when it would appear, 
that they answered, that it was not of the world and not earthly, 
but heavenly and angelic, and that it would be at the end of the 



120 THE CANON 

age, at which time He coming in glory will judge living and 
dead, and will give to each one according to his works. Upon 
which Domitian, not having anything against them but despising 
them as poor people, let them go free and stopped by decree the 
persecution against the Church. And that they then dismissed 
became leaders of the Churches, on the one hand as witnesses " 
— they had stood before the emperor — " and on the other hand 
as from the family of the Lord. And that they, there being 
peace, continued to live up to the time of Trajan. This 
Hegesippus relates." 

" After Nero and Domitian, at the point of which we are now 
searching out the times," — thus writes Eusebius (H. E. 3. 32), 
— " it is related that here and there and city by city by reason 
of uprisings of the common folk, the persecution was excited 
against us, in which, as we have received word, Simeon the son 
of Clopas, whom we have shown to have been appointed the 
second bishop of the Church in Jerusalem, laid down his life 
in martyrdom. And of this that very same one is a witness of 
whom we have before used different statements, Hegesippus. 
Who then telling about certain heretics, adds the relation that 
therefore at this very time enduring accusation from these, the 
one named as a Christian [Simeon] having been tortured many 
days and astonishing not only the judge but also those about 
him in the highest degree, was finally borne away almost with 
the passion of the Lord. But there is nothing like hearing the 
author relating these very things word for word about thus : 
Some of these, namely of the heretics, accused Simeon the son 
of Clopas as being from David and a Christian, and thus he 
becomes a martyr, being one hundred and twenty years old, 
while Trajan was emperor and Atticus was consul." — That was 
probably about the beginning of the second century, perhaps 
around the year 104. — Eusebius continues: "And the same 
[Hegesippus] says that then also it came to pass that his 
[Simeon's] accusers, the ones from the royal tribe of the Jews, 
being sought for, were taken prisoners as being from it. And by 
a calculation anyone would say that Simeon also must have been 
one of the personal seers and hearers of the Lord, using as a 
proof the length of the time of his life and the fact that the scrip- 
ture of the Gospels makes mention of Mary the wife of Clopas, 
from whom also above the account showed that he was born." 



THE AGE OF IREN^US — HEGESIPPUS 121 

"More than this the same man [Hegesippus], relating these 
things about the ones mentioned, adds that until those times 
the Church remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin, those 
trying to corrupt the sound canon of the saving preaching, if 
there were any such, until then remaining concealed as in some 
obscure darkness. When the holy chorus of the apostles 
received a various end of life, and that generation passed by of 
those who had been held worthy to hear the very utterances of 
the divine wisdom, then the system of the godless delusion took 
its start, through the deceit of the teachers teaching other 
doctrines, who also, inasmuch as no one of the apostles was 
longer left, now with uncovered head tried to herald abroad the 
falsely so-called knowledge (Gnosis) against the heralding of the 
truth." The great point of the Simeon story for us is the age of 
Simeon. He was a hundred and twenty years old at the time of 
his martyrdom. We do not know in what year that was, save that 
it was between 98 and 117, and I have suggested 104 because 
of the fact that an Attius, which is almost Atticus, was then 
consul. But let us go to the year 117. If Simeon happened to 
be martyred in the last year of Trajan's reign, with his hundred 
and twenty years he would have been born three years " before 
Christ," that is to say, a single year later than Jesus. How much 
he must have known of the life of Jesus from the very first and 
how much he must have seen and heard of the life of the 
Christians between the crucifixion and the reign of Trajan ! 

But to return to Hegesippus : the remark of Eusebius about 
the books that are called apocryphal deserves attention. It is 
true that Eusebius gives no names of books, and it is possible 
that Hegesippus mentioned no names. Yet when he says that 
Hegesippus relates that some of these were fabrications of 
heretics of his own day, we feel sure that with that word the 
genuine books of the New Testament are placed for Hegesippus 
beyond all doubt as from the time of the apostles. The 
passage of Christians hither and thither, and the interchange 
of thought and of life, were far too incessant to admit of the 
successful fathering of books that were not genuine upon the 
apostles. When we reflect upon Eusebius' words about 
Hegesippus and the Hebrew and the Syriac and the Jewish 
tradition, we shall at once understand that it is not the intention 
of Eusebius to say that Hegesippus did not know our New 



122 THE CANON 

Testament books. He calls attention to the unknown, the 
uncommon in Hegesippus ; the common, the every day part, has 
no special interest for him. When we get Hegesippus' five 
books, we shall see what he calls apocryphal. As the name of 
Jude occurred above, when we read of his grandsons who were 
such plain everyday farmers or small peasants, the thought may 
have arisen, that these grandsons scarcely point to a grandfather 
who could have written the Epistle of Jude. To that is to be 
observed first, that we do not with mathematical certainty know 
who wrote the letter ; second, that the letter purports to be from 
this Jude whose grandsons are alive at the end of the century ; 
third, that Jude might have dictated the letter to a man who 
could write Greek ; and fourth, that even in this enlightened 
twentieth century there may be found grandsons of facile 
authors who are themselves not able to write books. So far 
from it that Hegesippus did not know our New Testament books, 
Hegesippus will undoubtedly have known the mass of our New 
Testament books. If there were some of them that he had not 
known in Palestine, he will have become acquainted with them 
at Corinth and surely at Rome, towards which all flowed. But 
he probably knew the most of them before he travelled west- 
ward. He probably had the Scriptures partly in view when he 
spoke or wrote of the unity of the Church, only that still for 
him the tradition by word of mouth seemed to be the weighty 
thing. 

If we try to gather together the fragments of knowledge that 
Eusebius' words about Hegesippus and out of Hegesippus' five 
books of Memoirs have given us, we shall find that the harvest 
is large, although not yet in every point precise. Dying between 
1 80 and 192, we may regard it as likely that Hegesippus had 
come to be seventy years old or thereabouts, and had been born 
therefore about no; were he sixty years old he would have 
been born about 120. Taking the earlier date with the state- 
ments as to his reaching Rome, which do not precisely agree 
with each other, we may conjecture that he came thither about 
160, being fifty years of age. A certain ripeness of experience 
might be looked for from a man who set out to take a general 
account of stock in the Christian Church. A very young man 
would not be likely to conceive the thought of searching 
through the lands for correct teaching and for due tradition. 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— TATIAN 1 23 

And the Churches would easily have viewed with suspicion a 
young man who came to them upon an errand of that kind. 
Hegesippus may well have begun his journey then as a man 
high up in the forties. Regarding it as certain that before 
Hegesippus reached Corinth and Rome the mass of our New 
Testament books were in common use in those two cities, we 
look upon the absence of any note of surprise or of dissent 
from him in respect to these books as a sign that he was 
accustomed to the use of the same books. Eusebius has with 
the greatest good sense not thought it necessary to give indefinite 
proofs for the generally accepted books, seeing that with his 
clear view of the early history of Christianity he felt sure that 
these books had from the first been in the undisturbed posses- 
sion of the members of the great Churches. Had he found in 
Hegesippus signs of dissent from the books used by the Church, 
he would have told us of it. We may rely upon that. We have 
no reason thus far to think that Eusebius did not play fair with 
his sources. 

If Hegesippus in all probability came from Palestine, Tatian 
came from Assyria. We do not know very much about him 
save that he was brought up as a Greek, and that he eagerly 
studied the various philosophies, and was initiated into various 
of the heathen mysteries. Perhaps Syrian or Armenian manu- 
scripts will some day give us more. He went to the West, to 
Rome, as a heathen. While there, probably under the influence 
of Justin Martyr, he became a Christian. He was very much 
devoted then to his teacher Justin, who died perhaps in the 
year 165. Tatian attributes his conversion to Christianity to 
writings. This may well be a figure of speech, in so far as he 
may have been led by the exhortations of Christians to the 
Scriptures. But it is interesting to see him put the Scriptures 
in that place. He tells in his Speech to the Greeks, that is to 
say to the heathen, how hollow and foul he had found their 
philosophy and their religious mysteries to be. And then (ch. 29) 
he says : " Coming back to myself, I sought around in what way 
I might be able to find out that which is true. And while I 
was turning over in my mind the most earnest questions, it so 
fell out that I lighted upon certain barbaric writings," — everything 
is barbaric that is not Greek, — "more ancient in comparison 
with the opinions of the Greeks, and more divine in comparison 



124 THE CANON 

with their error. And it came to pass that I was persuaded by 
these books because of the modesty of the way of writing and 
the artlessness of those who spoke and the comprehensibility of 
the making of all things and the foretelling of things to come 
and the propriety of the precepts and the oneness of the rule 
over all things. And my soul being thus taught of God, I 
understood that those things (the heathen things) had the form 
of condemnation, whereas these things do away with the servitude 
in the world and free us from many rulers and from ten thousand 
tyrants, and give us not what we had not received, but what, 
having received under the error, we were prevented from 
keeping." Those books were the books of the Old Testament 
certainly ; possibly he also had the Gospels in view. 

Tatian was not one of the men who go half-way. He had 
been much displeased by the looseness and corruption that he 
had found everywhere in heathenism, and he was eager to go to 
the greatest perfection possible in Christianity. Under Justin he 
remained a member of the Church. The heathen philosopher 
Crescens attacked both Justin and Tatian. After Justin's death 
Tatian taught in Justin's place. It may have been about the 
year 172 or 173 that he finally broke off his more direct connec- 
tion with the Church. Some say that he never completely broke 
away from it. At any rate he went back to the East and became 
a leader — to speak in modern terms — of a monastic body. That 
is to say, he did away with marriage and with eating flesh and 
with drinking wine. But there were then no monks. These 
people were Selfmasters. One thing that he did strikes directly 
into our criticism, and goes very far to prove the many claims 
I have made to the continued unquestioned existence and use 
of the books of the New Testament in the Church up to this 
date. For Tatian made a Harmony of the Gospels. Now what 
Gospels did he use? The Cospel to the Hebrews, or a Syriac or 
a Hebrew Gospel ? The whole subject is still somewhat lacking 
in clearness. But Tatian appears to have made his Harmony 
in Greek. That he made it in Greek fits also well with the 
name which he himself appears to have given the work. He 
called it the Through Four, which is a name taken directly 
from the four Gospels. The Greek name is Diatessaron. But 
what four Gospels did he use? Our four Gospels. The four 
Gospels of the Church. The only one of the four that anyone 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— TATIAN 1 25 

would have been inclined to have doubts about, would have 
been the Gospel of John, and Tatian began precisely with 
verses from that Gospel. 

He appears to have known well pretty much all our New 
Testament books, and I affirm that an educated Christian at 
Rome at that time could not help knowing them. Of course, 
Tatian could not go into scripture quotations out of either Testa- 
ment in his Speech to the Greeks. He would not have found 
much in them of the heathen systems and gods that he holds up 
before their eyes in derision and scorn. He certainly used many 
of the Epistles of Paul. He is said to have rejected the 
Epistles to Timothy, probably because of the advice to take a 
little wine. He insisted upon it, however, that Titus was genuine. 

Eusebius (H. E. 4. 29) gives from Irenseus some account of 
the group of heretics of which Tatian became one, and speaks 
at the same time hardly of Tatian, as became a good orthodox 
man who was the pink of propriety and who attacked by reason 
of office all heretics. I do not mean to say that Irenseus was 
a bad man. But he was a heresy hunter. He says : " From 
(coming from) Satorninus and Marcion those called Selfmasters 
preached no marriage, setting aside the ancient creation of God, 
and calmly denouncing the making of male and female for the 
generation of men. And they introduced continence on the 
part of those among them whom they called the full-souled 
ones, displeasing God who made all things. And they deny 
the salvation which is from the first Creator. And this now 
was conceived by them, a certain Tatian first leading in this 
blasphemy, who having been a hearer of Justin's, so long as he 
was with him brought nothing of this kind to the light, but 
after his martyrdom leaving the Church, made overweening with 
the notion of being a teacher and puffed up at the thought of 
being different from the others, he grounded a special kind of 
school, mythologising about certain unseen eons like those from 
Valentinus, and proclaiming that marriage was corruption and 
whoredom, almost like Marcion and Satorninus, and making a 
proof from the salvation of Adam by himself. This much then 
from Irenseus. A little later a certain Severus, laying hold of 
the name of the aforesaid heresy, became the cause for those 
who started from it of the name drawn from him of Severians. 
These, then, use the Law and the Prophets and the Gospels, 



126 THE CANON 

interpreting in their own way the thoughts of the sacred writings. 
And blaspheming Paul the apostle, they do away with his Epistles ; 
nor do they receive the Acts of the Apostles. Their former 
leader, Tatian, putting together a certain connection and collec- 
tion, I do not know how, of the Gospels, attached to it the 
name Diatessaron, which also still now is in the hands of 
some. And they say that he dared to change some of the 
sayings of the apostle, as correcting the syntax of their ex- 
pression." 

Eusebius then tells us that Tatian wrote a great deal, and 
he praises his Speech to the Greeks, which deduces all the 
wisdom of the Greeks from Moses and the prophets. In all 
this account from Irenaeus and Eusebius we see the spirit 
which at once accuses a man, even one who takes up an ascetic 
thought, of bad motives, the spirit which has in every age 
disgraced Christianity. The combination of the Law and the 
Prophets and the Gospels is striking. That the Severians 
interpreted in their own way was a matter of course. Neither 
Irenaeus nor Eusebius did anything else. But observe the fact 
that these people do away with Paul's Epistles. That can have 
only one single sense, and that is, that the Church all around 
and for long years before this time, let us say it up and down 
since the days of Paul had treasured his Epistles. It is almost 
worth a mild heresy to get in this negative way the confirmation 
of what we have all along insisted upon. These Epistles of 
Paul were not just at this time coming into use, and these 
Severians did not merely say : " No ! we do not agree with it. 
We shall not accept these Epistles." The Epistles were there 
long before the Severians were, just as the Epistle of James 
was there long before Luther called it "a straw letter." And 
it is very good, too, that Eusebius tells us that they did not 
receive the Acts of the Apostles. That book of Acts was 
there, too, years before. But their rejection of it makes its 
presence visible again precisely here. 

Eusebius' statement that Tatian was charged with changing 
some of the sayings of the apostle as if he were bettering the 
syntax, needs looking at. In the first place, the apostle is, of 
course, Paul. In the second century "the apostle" is pretty 
much always Paul. In the next place, if Tatian really did try to 
improve the Greek of some of Paul's wild sentences, it would not 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— TATIAN 1 27 

be very strange, and it would agree with the work which not at 
all unorthodox Alexandrian grammarians are suspected of having 
done at a later date. But, in the third place, it is in reality quite 
likely that the good people who spread this accusation were people 
who were not enough versed in the history and condition of the 
text of the New Testament. It is quite possible that what 
they thought were changed, corrected sentences, were simply 
manuscripts with other readings, or simply signs that Tatian 
had used manuscripts with other readings. And we may further 
add that the readings which Tatian had may just as well here 
and there, or even in general, have been better readings than 
the ones that his opponents supposed to be the right readings. 
These are the theoretical possibilities. What the precise state 
of the case was, we could only tell by receiving the two sets of 
readings. 

If we remember that books were at that time rolls, and that 
the four Gospels will have been four rolls, which must have been 
both dear and bulky and troublesome to compare with each 
other passage for passage, it will be easy to see that Tatian's 
condensing of the four Gospels into one convenient Harmony in 
one book must have met what a bookseller with modern views 
would call a pressing need of the day. The success of the book 
showed that the Church appreciated the work. It was translated 
into Syriac, supposing that we are right in assuming that it was 
originally Greek, and it passed in some shape or other, or much 
misshapen, into other languages. Now a Greek bishop about 
the middle of the fifth century gives us a view of the way in 
which this book had by that time come into vogue in his parts. 
It is Theodoret, who became bishop of Cyrus on the Euphrates 
in Upper Syria m the year 423. He writes (Haer. Fab. 1. 20) : 
"And Tatian the Syrian became at first a sophist," — that 
is Theodoret's short way of giving a heretic a not very nice 
title, and getting round the fact of the wide philosophical and 
heathen religious researches of Tatian, — "and thereafter was a 
pupil of the divine Justin the martyr. This one also put 
together the Gospel called Diatessaron, not only cutting away 
the genealogies, but also the other things so far as they show 
that the Lord was born from the seed of David after the flesh. 
And not only the people of his society used this, but also those 
who follow the apostolical dogmas, not having known the evil 



128 THE CANON 

tendency of the composition, but using it in simplicity as a short 
book. And I found more than two hundred such books held 
in honour in the Churches among us, and gathering them all 
together I put them aside, and introduced instead of them the 
Gospels of the four evangelists." 

Long after that time copies of the book itself and of com- 
mentaries on it were found in some places. We should be glad 
if we could find a genuine copy of it to-day. From Theodoret's 
description it is perfectly clear that only our four Gospels were 
used in the Diatessaron. He would have pounced like a vulture 
on any sign of an apocryphal Gospel in it. We have another 
reference to this Diatessaron from the Syrian side of Syria, 
Theodoret having given us the Greek side. Somewhere about the 
middle of the third century it is likely that the apocryphal book 
called the Teaching of Addai was written, and perhaps in or 
near Edessa. This book says that the early Christians in Edessa 
heard the Old Testament read, and with it "the New [Testament] 
of the Diatessaron." We know further from Dionysius Bar 
Salibi, who wrote near the close of the twelfth century, that 
Ephrsem the Syrian, a deacon in Edessa, who died in the 
year 373, wrote a commentary on the Diatessaron, parts of 
which commentary we now have from an Armenian translation. 
We also have an Arabic translation from a Syriac text ; but this 
and a Latin form especially are not accurate reproductions of 
the original, the Latin being not in the least from the real text 
of the Diatessaron. Tatian's book did a long service, and will 
certainly not have corrupted the Christianity of any reader, 
much as Theodoret was exercised about its use in the Churches 
near him. 

Tatian has placed before our view a man who grew up a 
heathen, affording a contrast to Hegesippus, who appears to 
have been of Jewish descent. Like Hegesippus he was a man 
of travel, and like him he visited Rome. Hegesippus had the 
practical unity of the Church in view. Tatian regarded purity 
as an aim that preceded unity. His heretical ideas have in no 
way injured or lessened his value for our criticism. He had as 
a good orthodox Christian the most of our books, and he only 
made their existence the more clear when he as a heretic 
discarded some things that he had before used. He holds an 
altogether unique position in the history of the New Testament. 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— MURATORIAN FRAGMENT 1 29 

Aside from his Diatessaron, no other book of such importance 
ever gained such a foothold in the Christian Church. One 
point should not be overlooked, namely, the fact that Tatian 
did not hesitate to pare away from the New Testament the 
parts which he did not consider good. We have no information 
as to whether in this he was led by the influence of Marcion or 
not. The likeness of some of the views attributed to him to 
views of Marcion's would make Marcion's example seem all the 
more probable. Should any one, however, be desirous of con- 
cluding from Tatian's treatment of the Gospels that the Church 
then, the Church of his day, did not hold the Gospels to be equal 
to the divine Scriptures of the Old Testament, we have only to 
recall the two facts, first that a heretic freed himself from the 
opinion of the Church, and second that Tatian as well as Marcion 
seems to have thought the God of the Old Testament creation 
to be an inferior God. The trend of these two facts goes 
nevertheless to show that the whole question of religious, of 
sacred books was not regarded as one of very strict importance, 
or as one that had been definitely and once for all settled, even 
for the Old Testament. 

We now come to a remarkable fragment of an old book that 
is extremely valuable for the criticism of the canon. It is called 
the Muratorian fragment, after the name of the Italian historian 
and librarian Muratori who first published it. Muratori found 
the fragment in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. He seems to 
have thought that it would not be prudent to publish it as a 
fragment that bore upon the canon, seeing that its statements 
are sometimes peculiar. He therefore printed it as a specimen 
of the very careless way in which the scribes in the Middle Ages 
copied manuscripts. The actual writing is of the eighth or 
perhaps even of the seventh century, but the contents are 
several centuries older. It is sometimes thought to be of the 
third century. I still incline to date it about 170. It is written 
in Latin. Some have regarded it as a translation from the 
Greek. Should it have been written at Rome at the date 
named, it would presumably have been written in Greek, for 
Greek continued to be the Christian literary language at Rome 
until well into the third century. But this argument is not of 
great weight, in so far as we do not know what the extent of the 
book or the essay was to which the fragment belonged. Caius 

9 



I30 THE CANON 

and Papias and Hegesippus have been named by different 
scholars as the probable authors. We have no clue whatever to 
the name of the writer, and as little to the character of the book 
from which it was drawn. It may have been an apologetical 
book. In this fragment, were it complete, we should have the 
earliest known list of the books of the New Testament, although 
we do not find this designation in it. We cannot doubt that 
the full copy contained the books of the Old Testament, of 
which, as we have already seen, Melito had drawn up a list. 

The beginning of the list of the books of the New Testament 
is lost. It is, however, to be presupposed that the Gospel 
according to Matthew was named first, and that the first of the 
eighty-five lines preserved refers to Mark. The mutilated 
sentence probably said that Mark gave the account of tradition 
which Peter related to him and then, referring to the presence 
of Mark after the crucifixion, said that, nevertheless, Mark put 
down for himself the narrative of the occurrences which he 
himself saw as an eye-witness. It should not, it seems to me, 
be thought that Mark, who lived at Jerusalem, had positively 
not seen Jesus before the crucifixion. He was certainly a young 
man, perhaps very young, and his merely seeing Jesus and 
hearing Him speak in passing would not be a thing of which the 
least notice would have been taken at that time. There were 
many men of mature age who had had much intercourse with 
Jesus. It did not in the least lie in the habit of the time and 
the land to ask around exactly and to chronicle carefully the 
name of every child that had been in the presence of Jesus. 
That there were four Gospels, and only four, is clear then when 
we find in the second line that Luke is given as the third. And 
there is not a shadow of a reason for thinking that the first 
and second were anything but Matthew and Mark. Luke is 
designated as a physician, and then described as one who after 
the ascension was attached to Paul as a student of the law. That 
does not mean that Luke gave up medicine and turned law 
student under Paul, as Paul had studied under Gamaliel. It 
points to the need that Luke as a heathen by birth had to take 
up the study of the Old Testament. The fragment seems to 
allude to the fact, which every one feels, that Luke was more 
independent as an author than Mark was. It agrees that he did 
not see the Lord in the flesh. It adds, however, that he wrote 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— MURATORIAN FRAGMENT 131 

in his own name and as well as he could follow the events, and 
that he began with the birth of John. 

The account of the way in which John came to write his 
Gospel is interesting. The fellow-disciples of John and his 
bishops — one might think of the bishops in Asia near Ephesus 
— appear as having urged him to write a Gospel. John replied 
to them : " Fast with me three days from to-day on, and let us 
tell each other whatever may be revealed to each one. That 
same night it was revealed to Andrew the apostle that John 
should write everything in his own name, and that they all 
should look his work through." That is a pretty story, but is 
in all probability a late invention. Then the author tells us that 
though the Gospels have each an own principle, as going forth 
from different authors, they nevertheless present no differences 
for faith, since they all proceed from the one chief spirit, relating 
the birth, the passion, the resurrection, the conversation with 
His disciples, and His double coming, the first time in humility 
despised, which is past, the second time glorious in royal power, 
which is to come. Marcion rejected all the Gospels but Luke, 
and attested thereby the four of the Church. Tatian witnessed 
to the four in his Harmony. And this Muratorian fragment has 
the four Gospels. They have been together for years before we 
have happened to receive these glimpses of the state of the case. 
They probably were brought together very soon after, it may be 
immediately after, the writing of the Gospel according to John. 

The author of the fragment continues by observing that it is 
then not strange that " John gives the details so firmly also in his 
Epistle, saying : What we ourselves have seen with our eyes and 
heard with our ears and touched with our hands, these things we 
have written to you. For he thus declares himself to be not only 
a seer but also a hearer, and also a writer of all the wonderful 
things of the Lord in order." In these words we have, then, an 
early instance of the way in which the First Epistle of John was 
closely bound to the Gospel in tradition. The Second and the 
Third Epistles may very well have still been lying quietly in the 
hands of the private persons who first received them, at the time 
at which the custom of joining the First Epistle to the Gospel was 
started. Next follows the book of Acts, which the author of the 
fragment, without the least propriety but in accordance with 
the carelessness of early times and in accordance with other 



132 THE CANON 

Christians, calls the Acts of all the Apostles. He says that they 
are written in one book. How many books would the acts of 
all of the apostles have filled? How much there must have 
been to tell about Peter and about John ! Here the author 
thinks that Luke had personal knowledge of the details. He 
agrees that Luke omits Peter's death and Paul's journey to 
Spain, and we may conjecture that it is because he was not 
present at either event. As for Paul's Epistles, they themselves 
declare to those who wish to know it from what place and for 
what reason they were written : " First of all to the Corinthians 
forbidding the heresy of schism, then second to the Galatians 
about circumcision, but to the Romans he wrote more at length, 
declaring the sequence of the Scriptures, and that their head 
and chief is Christ. About these things we must say more. 
Inasmuch as the blessed Apostle Paul, following the order of his 
predecessor John, writes by name only to seven Churches in the 
following order : to the Corinthians first, to the Ephesians 
second, to the Philippians third, to the Colossians fourth, to 
the Galatians fifth, to the Thessalonians sixth, to the Romans 
seventh. But to the Corinthians and Thessalonians for reproof 
he writes a second time. Nevertheless it is made known that 
the one Church is diffused through the whole round of the earth. 
And John, although he writes in the Revelation to seven Churches, 
notwithstanding speaks to all. But one to Philemon and one 
to Titus and two to Timothy for love and affection. Yet they 
are sacred to the catholic Church in the regulation of Church 
discipline." The way in which that remark is added, looks 
almost as if the author had in mind some people who did not 
accept or like these Epistles to the separate persons. 

Then the fragment alludes to two Epistles that are not among 
ours : " There is also an Epistle to the Laodiceans, another to the 
Alexandrians forged in Paul's name for the heresy of Marcion, 
and many others which cannot be received in the catholic 
Church, for it is not fitting to mingle gall with honey. The 
Epistle of Jude and two with the name of John are held in 
honour in the catholic Church, and Wisdom written by the 
friends of Solomon to his honour." The way in which these 
two small Epistles of John are named seems odd. The author 
alludes to them almost hesitatingly. Or is it only because they 
are so very short ? Two Revelations are known to this writer, 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— DIONYSIUS OF CORINTH 133 

but the second is of questioned acceptance : " The Revelation 
of John and of Peter only we acknowledge, which (I think this 
applies only to Peter's Revelation) some of us do not think 
should be read in church." 

At this last sentence our thoughts must turn back to the 
discussion of the reading in church, and the words that follow 
will bear upon the same point. They refer to that book of 
Hermas of which we spoke above : " The Pastor, however, 
Hermas wrote lately in our day in the city of Rome, his brother 
Pius the bishop being seated in the chair of the Roman Church. 
And therefore it is fitting that it be read. But to the end of 
time it cannot be read publicly in the church before the people 
either among the finished number of the prophets or among 
the apostles." There we have a clear distinction, I think, be- 
tween the books that are : Man to Men, and those that are : 
God to Men. The fragment closes with references to heretical 
books. The names are partly so much corrupted that we 
cannot tell just what they are : " But of Arsinous or Valentinus 
or Miltiades we receive nothing at all. Who also wrote a new 
book of Psalms for Marcion, along with Basilides, Assianos the 
founder of the Cataphrygians." That is a rich fragment in spite 
of all its defects. We have the four Gospels, Acts, the Epistles 
of Paul, the Epistles of John, Jude, the Revelation. So far as 
the fragment goes, it brings neither James nor the Epistles of 
Peter nor Hebrews. Of course, in the case of a copyist who 
was so extremely careless, there remains the possibility that in 
some place a line or several lines have been omitted. These 
Epistles are, however, Epistles that would be likely at first to be 
read more in the East than in the West. But we "have seen that 
the Epistle to the Hebrews was known at Rome as early as 
about 95. There may have been some special reason for its 
omission in this fragment. Perhaps the author of the fragment 
thought, as Tertullian did, that Hebrews was written by 
Barnabas, and he may have not been inclined to put it into 
the list on that account. 

We have thus far in this period touched Palestine, Syria, and 
Assyria, and ever again Rome. Now we must turn to Corinth, 
and to the Bishop Dionysius of that city. Dionysius was in 
one respect like the Apostle Paul and like Ignatius, namely, in 
writing letters to the Churches. He wrote to the Christians of 



134 THE CANON 

the Churches, not to the bishops. He was probably bishop at 
the time of Justin's martyrdom, perhaps in the year 165, and it 
is likely that he died before 198. He was perhaps the successor 
of Primus whom Hegesippus mentions. He must have been a 
man of great note, since the brethren demanded that he write to 
them. We gain from the few words about him and from his pen, 
that Eusebius (H. E. 4. 23) has preserved for us, quite a picture of 
the Churches of his day in his neighbourhood. He names several 
bishops, Palmas in Pontus, Philip in Crete, Pinytus in Crete, 
Soter at Rome, Puplius and his successor Quadratus at Athens. 
We know of seven of his letters : to the Lacedaemonians, to the 
Athenians, to the Nicomedians, to the Gortynians, to the 
Amastrians, to the Cnossians (Cnossos was a little east of Candia 
on the island of Crete ; its position was settled by Arthur 
John Evans and his friends in 1900), and to the Romans. 
Eusebius gives a short characteristic description of his letters, 
which Eusebius calls " catholic letters to the Churches," as if he 
thought of the Catholic Epistles in the New Testament. He 
calls the letter to the Lacedaemonians a catechetical letter of 
orthodoxy, and a reminder of peace and unity. The letter to 
the Athenians is an awakening letter for faith and for the 
manner of life taught in the Gospel, and he reproves those who 
forget that life, and points to the example of their Bishop 
Puplius who became a martyr in the persecutions then. He 
also praises the zeal and chronicles the success of the Bishop 
Quadratus who followed Puplius. Thereat he refers to Dionysius 
the Areopagite led to the faith by Paul, and as the first one 
taking the oversight of the parish at Athens. The letter to 
Nicomedia was written against the heresy of Marcion, and stands 
fast in the canon of the truth. Writing to the Church living in 
this foreign world, "parishing," at Gortyna and to the rest of the 
Churches on Crete, he praises the Bishop Philip, and tells him to 
guard against heresy. In the letter to Amastris and the rest in 
Pontus, written at the request of Bacchylides and Elpistos, he 
"adds explanations of divine scripture." It would be interesting 
for us to have these comments of such a high age. The subjects 
touched upon in this letter show how wide a range a bishop 
then dared to take in writing to the Christians under another 
bishop. " He exhorts them at length about marriage and 
purity," — we might almost think he were passing on to Amastris 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— DIONYSIUS OF CORINTH 1 35 

the good thoughts that Paul had written to his own Church, — 
"and he tells them to receive again those who return again 
from any fall, whether a sin in general or whether a heretical 
error." 

The letter to the Cnossians on Crete and to their Bishop 
Pinytus displays still more plainly the fact that Dionysius, we 
might almost say, takes the place of a pope or of a patriarch 
towards these bishops and their sees. Precisely this letter gives 
us a New Testament background, for in it "he begs Pinytus 
the bishop of the parish not to place upon the brethren a heavy 
burden of necessity concerning purity, but to consider the 
weakness of the many." This doubtless points to a wish on the 
part of Pinytus to bring into use ascetic rules. " In replying to 
which Pinytus admires and accepts what Dionysius says, but 
begs him in return some time to impart firmer food, nourishing 
the people under him in the future with more complete letters, 
so that they may not by spending their time with milk-like words 
in the end discover that they had grown old in an infant method 
of life." We could not wish for any more practical portrayal of 
the application of Paul's word to Church questions. "Further," 
says Eusebius, " we have a letter of Dionysius also addressed to 
the Romans." " He writes as follows : For from the beginning 
this is your habit to bestow kindness in various ways upon all 
the brethren, and to send provisions for the journey," — remember 
that the Christians are all living in this foreign land, are all 
pilgrims to the heavenly home, and hence need the money or 
other provision for the way, — "here refreshing the poverty of the 
needy, and by the money for the journey which you have sent 
from the beginning affording support to the brethren in the 
mines, ye Romans thus preserving the custom of the Romans 
handed down from the fathers, which your blessed Bishop Soter 
not only kept up but also increased, not only bestowing the 
abundance distributed to the saints, but also like a warmly-loving 
father comforting the desponding brethren like children with 
blessed words." That was Dionysius. 

Eusebius adds for our special benefit : " In this very letter he 
also makes mention of the letter of Clement to the Corinthians, 
bringing to view that the reading of it before the Church was 
done from old times by an ancient custom." He says then : 
"To-day then we passed the Lord's day a holy day, in which we 



136 THE CANON 

read your letter, which we ever hold and keep in mind by reading 
it, as also the one formerly written to us by Clement." The point 
of these things for the canon, lies first of all in the active inter- 
course between the Churches. We have seen that Rome must 
have long since had the body of our New Testament books. 
Now we see this same Rome sending its riches to the poor in 
various Churches, and to the Christians working as prisoners in 
mines and quarries. And, moreover, Soter sends not only money, 
but also comforting words. It seems to me that no rational 
person will be inclined to think that these Churches and these 
scattered Christian prisoners were totally ignorant of the New 
Testament books, the fulfilling of the precepts in which was 
bringing them these bountiful provisions for the hard places in 
their earthly journey. And in the reading of Soter's letter and of 
the letter of Clement we have examples of the way in which the 
division Man to Man in the service was partly filled up. It will 
remain to be seen later whether we should in the case of the 
letter of Clement suppose that it was read at Corinth from the 
point of view of God to Man. For the moment it will certainly 
be granted that the mention of it in connection with the letter of 
Soter does not point to that. Further is to be observed that the 
reading of the books of the New Testament in Corinth as in 
Rome is to be presupposed although it is not mentioned here. 
This is not a thoughtless assumption. It is the only conception 
of the situation that is scientifically possible. 

Dionysius has not yet exhausted his stores for us. He gives 
us a glimpse of the way in which some Christians treated letters 
at that day. Eusebius writes : " And the same [Dionysius] speaks 
as follows of his letters as being treacherously treated : For when 
the brethren asked it of me that I should write letters, I wrote 
them. And these the apostles of the devil have mingled with 
tares, taking some things out and putting some things in. For 
whom the Woe is waiting. It is then not strange if some have 
laid their hands upon the work of treating the writings about 
the Lord treacherously, seeing that they have taken such counsel 
against letters that are not such as those are." Last of all, 
Eusebius tells that Dionysius wrote a letter to a most faithful 
sister Chrysophora, " in which, writing to her of the things that 
belong to her duty, he imparts also to her logical food," food of 
the word we may say, or reasonable food. The expression recalls 



THE AGE OF IRENvEUS— DIONYSIUS OF CORINTH 1 37 

Paul's words in Romans, "your reasonable service," or Peter's 
words, "the reasonable guileless milk." Dionysius has carried 
us to Asia Minor on the east and to Rome on the west, and has 
set the Church before us in constant intercourse between its parts. 
His letters themselves display a kind of interchange between 
Churches that we should not look for to-day in circles in which 
bishops rule. The Bishop of Rhode Island of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church would scarcely like it if the Bishop of Illinois 
should take occasion to write to his diocese about their duties. 
The Bishop of Durham would certainly not be pleased if the 
Bishop of Lincoln should be asked to write and should write to 
his diocesans about marriage and chastity. The explanation lies 
partly in the simple conditions of that day, in the comparatively 
undeveloped notion of the duties and rights of bishops, — would 
that the notion had remained undeveloped, — partly in the high 
position of Corinth as a city in which Paul had lived and to 
which he had sent two letters, and partly without doubt in a 
certain gracious fatherly disposition on the part of Dionysius 
himself, possibly coupled at the close with the glory, the halo of 
a patriarchal age on the part of Dionysius that made bishops and 
people eager to bask in the light that reflected alike from a remote 
past of Christian tradition and from a near future when he should 
stand before the throne of God. Dionysius' distinction between 
writings about the Lord — the Greek phrase is really " Lordly 
writings," the word Lord meaning here surely Jesus — and his 
own letters " that are not such," emphasises for us the difference 
alluded to between the writings which belong in the service to 
the part God to Man and those which belong to the part Man 
to Man. Probably Dionysius has at first in view the Gospels as 
especially pertaining to the Lord. Inasmuch, however, as he is 
speaking of his own letters, it is altogether possible, and I think 
it probable that he also thinks of the Epistles of the Apostles as 
belonging to these writings respecting the Lord. 

At the beginning of the last quarter of the second century, 
probably from the year 177, we have a trifling yet not unwelcome 
testimony to Matthew, and John, and Romans, and First 
Corinthians, and Galatians, from the pen of Athenagoras an 
Athenian philosopher, who wrote an Apology, addressed to 
Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and soon after that an essay 
on the Resurrection from the dead. 



138 THE CANON 

Antioch, which gave us Ignatius, offers us here Theophilus, 
who was bishop there somewhere about the years 181 to 190. 
He wrote three books to Autolycus which are preserved, and 
among many other, lost, books was a Harmony of the Gospels 
and a commentary on the Harmony. Eusebius declares that 
Theophilus quotes the book of Revelation in his book against 
the heretic Hermogenes. Describing Theophilus, Eusebius 
observes how very corrupt heresy then was, and how the shepherds 
of the Church warded the heretics off like wild beasts from the 
sheep of Christ : " On the one hand with warnings and admo- 
nitions to the brethren, and on the other hand by placing them 
naked and unclothed before them, not only face to face with 
unwritten discussions and refutations, but now also by means 
of written reminders setting straight forth their opinions with 
the most exact proofs." Eusebius adds that Theophilus wrote a 
good book against Marcion which was then still preserved. The 
three books written by Theophilus to his friend Autolycus, a 
heathen, — and Theophilus was himself by birth a heathen, — are 
not strictly connected with each other, having been written, the 
first as an account of a discussion with Autolycus, the second at 
the request of Autolycus, and the third as a thought of 
Theophilus'. 

In the closing chapter of the first book, Theophilus tells 
how he himself had been converted by reading "the sacred 
writings of the holy 'prophets," who had foretold the future. 
Like Justin and the earlier Aristobulus and Philo, he de- 
clares that the heathen writers drew their wisdom from the 
prophets. In the second book he calls the prophets "spirit- 
bearers of the Holy Spirit " inspired and made wise by God, and 
quotes the Old Testament as : " teaches us the Holy Spirit by 
the prophets," — "teaches the divine scripture," — "the divine 
scripture," — " the divine Scriptures." In one passage he writes : 
" Whence the holy Scriptures and all the spirit-bearers teach us, 
of whom John says : In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, showing that at first God only was and in 
Him the W T ord." Then he says : " And God was the Word : all 
things were made by Him ; and without Him nothing was made." 
This passage is said not to imply the equal value of the books of 
the New Testament with those of the Old Testament. I insist 
upon it that so far as these words of Theophilus have any mean- 



THE AGE OF IREN.FUS— THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH 1 39 

ing at all, they place John the evangelist and his words in a 
distinctly exceptional position. They call John one of the 
"spirit-bearers," and that is precisely the designation which, as 
we saw a moment ago, Theophilus applied to the prophets who 
were the writers of the divine Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
When, then, the holy Scriptures and all the spirit-bearers are 
mentioned together and John is declared to be one of them, the 
purpose of this juxtaposition is not to say that John is less than 
the prophets, but to put him on a par with the prophets. The 
same thing if not more appears from the contents of the quotation 
from John. What is quoted is not a saying of Jesus, but the 
saying of the evangelist. And this evangelical spirit-bearer does 
not here make some general indifferent remark such as that 
idolatry or whoredom or what not is a sin. On the contrary, 
this Gospel writer gives the fundamental statement touching God 
and the Word : " In the beginning was God, and the Word 
was with God." It seems to me that no observation upon the 
difference made between a prophet and a spirit-bearer can in any 
way overbalance the use here made and made by name touching 
John. It is, besides, the first time that John is thus named as the 
evangelist. Theophilus also knows very well indeed the Epistles 
of Paul and First Peter. In the third book, after dealing with 
the prophets, he says (3. 12) : " Moreover also as to righteousness 
of which the law speaks, we find that similar things are con- 
tained in the [writings] of the prophets and of the Gospels," — the 
word " Gospels " may very well be an error for " evangelists," — 
" because all the spirit-bearers have made their utterances with 
the one spirit of God." He then quotes the Gospels repeatedly ; 
for example (3. 13) : "And the gospel voice teaches in the strongest 
manner about chastity, saying " — not to look at a woman with 
evil thought, and not to put away a wife. Then he writes (3. 14) : 
" And those doing what is good it [the Gospel] teaches not to 
boast, that they may not be men-pleasers. For let not your left 
hand, it says, know what your right hand does. Moreover also 
about the being subject to powers and authorities and praying 
for them, the divine word commands us that we should lead a 
calm and quiet life, and teaches to render to all, all things j to 
whom honour, honour ; to whom fear, fear ; to whom taxes, taxes : 
to owe no man anything, save only to love all." 

A great deal too much has been made of the fact that Theo- 



140 THE CANON 

philus in writing these three books brings in comparison so little 
from the New Testament and so much from the Old Testament. 
The fact is that Theophilus in the first place quotes extraordinarily 
often all manner of heathen books, not, of course, as Scripture, 
high as he rates the Sibyl. And then he quotes a great deal 
from the Old Testament precisely because Autolycus wishes to be 
informed about God and about man from an Old Testament point 
of view. He quotes, for example, at one breath about three pages 
from the first chapter of Genesis, and a little later he brings 
another three pages. For the larger part of the three books only 
the Old Testament gave him the massive sentences about God 
that he wanted. Furthermore, it has been said that he quotes 
the New Testament very freely ; but so he does also the Old 
Testament when he does not need to get down a roll and write 
off a long paragraph. For example, Isaiah writes (40 22 ) : " He 
that sets up as a chamber the heaven and stretches [it] out like a 
tent to inhabit." Theophilus introduces this most formally, but 
writes (2. 13) : " God this one (This God [I wished to represent the 
Greek words]), the one making the heaven like a chamber^ and 
stretching [it] out like a tent to be lived in." 

As to the use of the Old Testament, even in the third book 
it is to be urged that one main point of that third book, as the 
first chapter shows, is the refutation of the opinion of Autolycus 
that the books of the Christians are new. It seems to me to 
follow directly from this opinion of Autolycus, that he had heard 
of altogether new Scriptures of the Christians. Indeed the weight 
of this statement goes rather to show that these newer books were 
the ones upon which the Christians laid the greatest stress. Of 
course, then, in opposing such views Theophilus must quote more 
Old Testament than New Testament, and must emphasise the 
value of those old books from which he deduces the wisdom of 
the heathen poets and philosophers. And there he cites Moses 
and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, whose very names produce 
an atmosphere of antiquity and of mystery. The words given 
above as the strong command of the Gospel voice about chastity 
are the intensifying of a word from Solomon. But that does not 
in the least signify that Theophilus did not account the Gospel 
as equal to Solomon. It is only a part of Theophilus' plan to 
give first those old writings which he is straining every nerve to 
commend as ancient and reverend to his heathen friend. 



THE AGE OF IREN.EUS— THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH 141 

The very way in which he nevertheless represents the Gospel 
as giving a more commanding statement as to chastity, permits 
us to see that he himself is more inclined to place the Gospels 
above than below the Old Testament Scriptures. And then we 
are told that Theophilus does not account Paul's writings of high 
value, or as equal to those of the Old Testament. Now it is not 
well to be all too wise about shades of difference. I confess that 
I do not feel sure that Theophilus regarded the prophets as 
exactly equal to the law. In the same way it must be conceded 
that Theophilus may have thought that the letters of Paul were 
not quite equal to the words of Jesus. But a concession of this 
kind is of no extraordinary importance. For, if I am not 
mistaken, in spite of all doctrines of the equality of the holiness 
of the books of the New Testament, only very few Christians in 
this twentieth century would fail to feel that a statement backed 
by direct words of Jesus had a higher authority than one merely 
confirmed by an Epistle of Paul or any other apostle. When, 
however, we find that Theophilus quotes Old Testament passages 
with varying degrees of freedom and with indefinitely varying 
introductory words, we must not ask too much for the New 
Testament words. Look, for example, at the following series. 
Theophilus (3. 14) quotes Isaiah, and introduces the words by: 
" Isaiah the prophet said." Directly after the verse from Isaiah 
he quotes Matthew, using the introduction : " And the Gospel : 
Love ye, it saith," and so on. He brings here two or three 
passages from Matthew together. And then he passes to the 
Epistle to Titus in this manner : " And further also about the 
being subject to powers and authorities and praying for them, 
the divine word commands us that we should live a calm and 
quiet life. And teaches to render to all, all things " ; see above. 
The prophet said, the Gospel saith, it says (used in one of the 
quotations from Matthew), the divine word commands us. That 
series shows to my mind no special decline in its reverence for 
Paul when it says of his words : " the divine word commands 
us." His words are words of the divine word, and they command 
us. 

It seems to me that that places Paul's words just as high 
as the words of Isaiah. We must, however, remember that 
Theophilus' main point against his heathen friend is the age of 
the writings. Shortly after the above quotation he writes (3. 16) : 



142 THE CANON 

" But I wish to show thee now more accurately, God granting, 
the things which pertain to the times, so that thou mayest 
understand that our word is neither new nor mythical, but older 
and more true than all the poets and writers, of those writing in 
uncertainty." Of necessity, then, he must go back to Moses and 
the prophets as predecessors of Homer and Plato and the rest of 
the heathen poets and philosophers. And this third book then 
continues to the close the comparison of Jewish and heathen 
history. There is to my mind not the shadow of a doubt that 
Theophilus had the bulk of our New Testament books, and that 
he regarded them in general as all of them equal in authority to 
the books of the Old Testament. 

From Antioch and the East we must now pass far over to the 
West, to Gaul, and visit the Churches of Vienne and of Lyons. 
Vienne is the place to which Herod was sent as an exile with 
Herodias after the murder of John the Baptist. Josephus the 
Jewish historian says so. It lies thirty-one kilometres to the 
south of Lyons, and contains still a temple of Augustus and 
Livia. Lyons itself, where Augustus resided several years, is 
to-day the third city of France. Eusebius opens the fifth book 
of his Church History by a brilliant paragraph upon the martyrs 
who suffered under Antoninus Verus, that is to say, Marcus 
Aurelius, and that in the seventeenth year of his reign, about 
the year 178-179. He relates that these persecutions were 
stirred up by the populace in the cities here and there through 
the world ; and he offers to give as a specimen the story of those 
martyred in one special country, because he is so fortunate as to 
have a written account of their sufferings, which were worthy of 
imperishable remembrance, being not victories won by blood 
and tens of thousands of murders of children, but most peaceful 
wars for peace of the soul, not even for the native country, but 
for the truth and for godliness. And then he points to Gaul 
and to those cities in the valley of the Rhone. 

The document to which he refers is a letter of the two Churches 
of Vienne and Lyons. The very address of this letter reminds us 
again of the close union between the Churches in distant lands, 
for it is addressed to the Churches in Asia and Phrygia. It was 
less strange that the same Churches also sent at the same time 
a letter to Rome, borne by Irenaeus, to whom we have already 
referred, who was then a presbyter in the Church at Lyons. 



THE AGE OF IREN.EUS— VIENNE AND LYONS 143 

They began the former letter thus : " The servants of God 
dwelling in this foreign world at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to 
the brethren in Asia and Phrygia who have the same faith and 
hope of redemption as we have, peace and grace and glory from 
God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord." Declaring that 
they could not duly describe nor writing contain an exact 
account of all they had suffered, they wrote : " But the grace 
of God led the fray against them and strengthened the weak, 
and set up firm pillars able by their patience to draw upon 
themselves the whole impetus of the evil one, who also met 
him together, standing all kinds of contumely and punishment, 
who also thinking the many [ills] were but few hurried on to 
Christ, showing, in fact, that the sufferings of the present time 
are not worthy to be compared to the glory which is going to 
be revealed to us." It is clear that they knew the eighth 
chapter of Romans (ver. 18). And they told of the first valiant 
young martyr who laid down his life for the defence of the 
brethren : " For he was and he is a genuine disciple of Christ, 
following the Lamb wherever He may go." They therefore were 
at home in the fourteenth chapter of the Revelation. Ten, alas ! 
yielded to the wiles of the evil one. 

Some of their heathen servants came out and denounced 
them as cannibals and as committing other horrible crimes, and 
then the people attacked them still more furiously : " And that 
was fulfilled which our Lord said : That the time will come in 
which every one slaying you will think he is offering a service 
to God." The sixteenth chapter of John was therefore in their 
hands. One of the men tortured was Attalos, who was from 
Pergamon ; and a woman, Blandina, endured torture from early 
morn until the evening, so that her persecutors confessed them- 
selves conquered, for they did not know what they could do 
more to her ; and they were amazed that she still lived, with her 
whole body rent and open. But she still held out, and she cried : 
"lama Christian, and no evil deed is done among us." Sanctus, 
who was tortured in the extreme, then took up a single answer ; 
and whether they asked his name, or his race, or his native 
country, or whether he was bond or free, replied to all questions 
by saying in Latin the words : "lama Christian." The governor 
was furious, and they put fiery plates of brass upon the tenderest 
spots in his body. It burned his flesh, but he remained firm : 



144 THE CANON 

" Cooled and strengthened by the heavenly spring of the water 
of life going forth from the body of Christ." We see how the 
Revelation and John are combined in that expression. 

Potheinos the bishop, who was over ninety years of age, was 
brought before the governor, who asked him who was the God 
of the Christians. After all the questions and answers that the 
governor had put and heard in these days, Potheinos regarded 
this question as mere trifling, and he replied to the governor: 
11 If you were worthy, you would know." And then the crowd hit 
and kicked and threw things at the old man, and he was carried 
away almost lifeless to the prison, where he died in two days. 
The beasts were let loose upon them in the amphitheatre, but in 
vain. The greater part of those who had from fear renounced 
Christianity, returned to a joyful martyrdom. One of the most 
valiant martyrs was Alexander, a physician from Phrygia, who 
had been many years in Gaul, another witness for the union of 
West and East. When they put Attalus on the heated iron chair, 
he cried out to the crowd in Latin : " This that you are doing is 
eating men. We do not eat men, nor do we do anything else 
that is bad." The firmness of the martyrs only infuriated the 
governor and the mob, and the Church wrote of them in the 
words of Daniel and of Revelation : " That the scripture should 
be fulfilled : Let the lawless one be lawless still, and let the 
just one be justified still." Knowing of the doctrine of the 
resurrection, the heathen watched the corpses of the martyrs 
night and day, and allowed no Christian to hold a burial service 
over them or to take them away for burial. After six days they 
threw what was not eaten by the dogs or burned up by fire into 
the Rhone. And they cried in an unconscious imitation of the 
spectators around the cross of Jesus : " Now let us see whether 
they will rise again, and whether their God is able to help them, 
and to draw them out of our hands." 

The letter called the Christians who had been tortured not 
once or twice only but often, and who were full of burns and 
sores and wounds, and who nevertheless neither called themselves 
martyrs nor wished the others to call them martyrs, — the letter 
called them zealous followers and imitators of Christ, " who," — 
in the words of the second chapter of Philippians, — " being in 
the form of God, did not think that the being equal to God was 
a thing that He should seize." We see in that the way in which 



THE AGE OF IRENiEUS— VIENNE AND LYONS 145 

they understood that passage, and, of course, we see that they 
knew well that Epistle. A little after that they used a phrase 
from First Peter, saying of the martyrs that " they humbled them- 
selves under the mighty hand [of God]." And then they allude 
to the book of Acts : " And they prayed for those who brought 
these fearful things upon them, like Stephen the perfect martyr : 
Put not this sin upon them." And they add beautifully: "But 
if he prayed for the people who stoned him, how much more for 
the brethren." That letter warmed and cheered and spurred on 
to like deeds many a Christian heart in those days. For us it is 
a monument of the unity of the Church, and a witness to the use 
of books of the New Testament. 

No one will undertake to deny that Potheinos, dying as bishop 
in 178 at more than ninety years of age, stretched back with his 
memory to the end of the first century, seeing that he must have 
been born before the year 88. We know of Potheinos the bishop, 
over ninety years old, and of Polycarp, who was martyred as 
bishop, eighty-six years old, in the year 155. How many other 
bishops and Christians wove the long years with long bands in 
one, whose names we do not know, because they were not 
martyrs, or because the story of their martyrdom has not reached 
us ! Who that has any appreciation of historic sequence and of 
historic contemporaneity can speak of the early Christian Church 
as if it were a disjointed, ill-connected series of little societies that 
knew little of each other and less of the past, and were a ready 
prey for every and even the most unskilful forger of Scriptures ? 

It was about this time apparently, somewhere about the 
year 178, that a heathen named Celsus wrote a book against 
Christianity and called it The True Word. In it he first pro- 
duces a Jew who refutes the externals of Jesus' life. Then 
he attacks it from the general point of view of a heathen 
philosopher, and endeavours to refute it in detail by arguments 
drawn from the history of philosophy; and then he tries to 
persuade the Christians to turn heathen. One thing is plain, 
and that is that he in general uses for the purpose of refuting 
them precisely our New Testament books in the main. He 
regards them as for Christians authoritative. At the close of 
his first part, in which a Jew has been bearing hard against 
Christianity, he shows clearly his position, his attitude towards 
the Scriptures. He writes : " Thus much, then, for you from 
10 



146 THE CANON 

your own writings, on the basis of which we need no other 
witness, for they refute themselves." He was of the opinion 
that the different Gospels arose from a different conception of 
the facts which led different people to change the one original 
Gospel into the forms of the four Gospels. He scourges the 
inclination of Christians to divide up into sects seeking novel 
opinions, and declares that if all other people came to desire to 
be Christians, the Christians would not care to be Christians 
any longer. He says that at the beginning there were only a 
few of them, and these were of one mind ; but that after they had 
increased and were spread abroad in great numbers, they divided 
and separated themselves from each other, and each wished to 
have his own party. He says that in the end they only have the 
name Christian in common, but in reality hardly that. He 
presses hard upon the belief of the Christians: "All this great 
effect is made by faith, which is determined in advance for 
something or other. And so the faith, which has taken possession 
of their souls, procures for the Christians the great attachment to 
Jesus, so that they account Him, who came from a mortal body, 
for God, and suppose they are doing something holy in thinking 
this." Celsus' book, so far as we can judge of it from the 
plentiful quotations which Origen gives in refuting it, was simply 
full of the New Testament, of the New Testament in general as 
we have it in our hands. What he finds strange, stupid, base, 
that is what we read in the New Testament. He is also well 
acquainted with the history of the Christians, and with the way in 
which certain heretics treated the Gospels and Epistles. 

We have named the period which is now occupying our 
thoughts, the age of Irenaeus. Irenaeus is another of the living 
bonds between the East and the West, between Smyrna, we may 
say in general Asia Minor, and Lyons or Gaul. It is to be. 
agreed that we do not know positively that he was born and 
grew up in Asia Minor. He himself did not think it worth 
while to make any precise statements upon this subject. I 
think, however, that his reference to Smyrna and to Polycarp 
and to Florinus, a friend or at least an acquaintance of his 
boyhood, all point to a stay of some years in Smyrna; and 
nothing seems to speak against his having been born there, save 
the tradition, almost isolated tradition, that he was by birth a 
Syrian. We know of nothing that in any way seems to favour 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— IREN^EUS 1 47 

his coming originally from Syria. In one special way there 
would be no obstacle to Syrian birth, if, namely, like Tatian, he 
should have been brought up in Syria as a Greek. However, I 
regard it as most likely that he was born and lived through his 
boyhood at least in Asia Minor, and probably in or near Smyrna. 
Thus far we can only guess at the date of his birth. He was 
probably born between the years 135 and 142. 

As a boy he saw Polycarp at Smyrna, and he appears to have 
been younger than Florinus whom he also saw, also during his own 
boyhood, at Smyrna and in the presence of Polycarp. Irenaeus 
speaks in no wise as if he had been a pupil of Polycarp's, but 
only as if he remembered seeing the distinguished old man as 
any boy stands and admires an old arid reverend bishop. It is 
humanly speaking a mere accident that furnishes us with that 
minute touching Polycarp. Florinus, who was a presbyter in the 
Church at Rome, became a heretic, took up the Valentinian 
Gnosticism while Victor was bishop, and therefore after 189 or 
190. And Irenaeus, who has been finding that Florinus' heretical 
books are spreading that heresy in Gaul, not only writes to 
Victor and begs him to suppress Florinus and his writings, but 
also writes to Florinus himself, and begins as a way of catching 
at a favourable point in Florinus' feelings by recalling his having 
in boyhood seen Florinus playing a distinguished part in the 
imperial chambers and before Polycarp. Whether the allusions 
to royalty imply a visit of an emperor or not, is not so clear as to 
make that point valuable for dating the meeting of Irenaeus with 
Florinus. Irenaeus says the most flattering thing he can to 
Florinus, and gives us at the same time a glimpse of his own 
early life. He tells that he remembers just where and how 
Polycarp sat and preached to the multitude, and how he told of 
his intercourse with John and with others who had seen the 
Lord, and of some things he had heard from them about the 
Lord and about His miracles and teaching, and how, having 
received [it] from those who themselves had seen the life of the 
Word, Polycarp announced all things in unison with the Scriptures. 
Here we see the combination of the two elements, of the tradition 
by word of mouth and of the written books. It is fitting that 
Irenaeus should lay stress upon this point, for it is especially 
with him that we begin to feel as if we had a certain literary 
basis for Christian life and Christian doctrine. 



148 THE CANON 

He continues the appeal to Florinus (Eusebius, H. E. 5. 20) : 
" And these things then by the grace of God that was granted 
to me I heard eagerly, storing them up for memory not on 
paper but in my heart, and I do ever by the grace of God 
chew the cud of them in their genuineness." And then he 
applies this all to his friend : " And I am able to bear witness 
before God that if that blessed and apostolic presbyter had 
heard some such thing as this [Florinus' heresy], crying out 
and stopping his ears and saying his accustomed phrase : ' O 
good God, until what times hast Thou preserved me, that I 
undergo these things,' he would also have fled from the place 
sitting or standing in which he had heard these words." And 
he confirms this his verbal tradition by adding the reference to 
Polycarp's letters : "And this can be made plain from his letters 
which he sent either to the neighbouring Churches strengthening 
them, or to some of the brethren admonishing them and urging 
them on." We thus have here the whole round of our field : 
(1) the teaching of the Lord ; (2) the words of those who saw and 
heard the Lord ; (3) the living words of Polycarp preaching to 
the people what he heard from those who saw the Lord; (4) 
Irenaeus' account of the preaching of Polycarp as agreeing with 
the Scriptures ; (5) and at last Polycarp's letters as conveying 
the same things as his preaching. The Scriptures play in this 
an important part. The value of the testimony from the eye- 
witnesses is undisputed, and this testimony is brought to bear to 
confirm the sacred books of the Church. 

Irenaeus was then no stranger to the Church at Rome, for 
he had about ten years before as a presbyter of the Church 
at Lyons carried the letter of that Church and of the Church 
at Vienne about the persecutions to the Church at Rome, and 
his Church gave him a high and warm recommendation to the 
Church in the imperial city. The two Churches wrote to 
Eleutheros the bishop at Rome (Eusebius, H. E. 5. 4) : 
" We have encouraged our brother and partaker [in our cares] 
Irenaeus to bear this letter to thee, and we beg thee to be kind 
to him as being zealous for the covenant of Christ." It is 
interesting to observe that Irenaeus in his effort to draw Florinus 
back to the Church also wrote to him a treatise on the Eight, 
the Ogdoas of Florinus' Valentinian system. Irenaeus' great 
work was his Refutation of the Heresies in five books. Un- 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— IREN^US 149 

fortunately the original is to a large extent lost, so that we are 
compelled to use for much of it the Latin translation. It must 
have been written between the years 181 and 189, and it may 
be called our first large Christian treatise in the series of Church 
writers that continues from his day to the present in an almost 
unbroken series. A bishop of his day, one combining the 
traditions of Asia Minor, of Rome, and of Gaul, cannot but 
have had the bulk of our New Testament. He uses distinctly 
the four Gospels, the book of Acts, First Peter, First John, all 
the Epistles of Paul save Philemon, — how easily that could 
happen not to be quoted, — and the Revelation. 

Irenseus' words about the four Gospels have passed into the 
literature of the Church in the closest connection with the 
Gospels, for they are used in a very large number of manuscripts 
as a brief preface to the Gospels. After giving through many 
pages a full description of the four Gospels, he writes (3. 11. 8): 
" But neither are there more Gospels in number than these, nor 
does it receive fewer. Since there are four directions of the 
world in which we are, and four general winds, and the Church 
is dispersed through all the earth, and the pillar and confirming 
of the Church is the gospel and spirit of life, it is fitting that 
it should have four pillars, breathing from all sides incorruption, 
and inflaming men. From which it is clear that the Word, the 
maker of all things, the one sitting on the Cherubim and holding 
all things together, having been revealed to men, gave us the 
Gospel fourfold, but held together in one spirit. . . . For the 
Cherubim are four-faced, and their faces are images of the activity 
of the Son of God. For the first living being, they say, is like 
a lion, characterising his practical and leading and kingly office. 
And the second is like a calf [or an ox], showing forth the sacri- 
ficial and priestly order. And the third having the face of a man, 
denoting most clearly His presence in human form. And the 
fourth like a flying eagle, making clear the gift of the Spirit flying 
down to the Church. And therefore the Gospels agree with 
these, in which Christ sits. For that according to John relates 
His princely and effective and glorious generation, saying : In the 
beginning was the Word. . . . And that, according to Luke, 
[telling] what is of the priestly character, begins with Zacharias 
the priest sacrificing to God. For the fatted calf is already 
prepared, about to be slain for the finding again of the younger 



150 THE CANON 

son. And Matthew heralds His birth according to man, saying : 
The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of 
Abraham. And : The birth of Jesus Christ was thus. Therefore 
this Gospel is anthropomorphic. And Mark made his beginning 
from the prophetic spirit, that comes upon men from on high, 
saying : The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as is written 
in Isaiah the prophet, showing the winged image of the Gospel. 
And for this reason he made the message short and swiftly 
running, for this is the prophetic character. . . . For the living 
beings are fourfold, and the Gospel and the activity of the Lord is 
fourfold. And for this reason four general covenants were given 
to humanity. One of the Flood, with Noah with the sign of the 
rainbow. And the second Abraham's, with the sign of circumci- 
sion. And the third, the giving of the law under Moses. And 
the fourth, the Gospel, through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

Then Irenseus goes on (3. 11. 9) to berate the empty and un- 
learned and bold men " who put aside the idea " — that is to say, 
the proper notion and preconception — " of the Gospel, and bring 
forward either more or fewer than the above mentioned forms of 
the Gospel. Some of them so that they may seem to have found 
out more of the truth, the others setting aside the things arranged 
by God." These words look, at the first glance, very interesting. 
It seems as if we might here, say in the year 185, have a repre- 
sentation of unknown apocryphal Gospels, or perhaps a description 
of various Gospels that were just as good as, and in some places 
quite as well accepted as our four Gospels, but that did not 
survive because they had not the good fortune to be added to the 
four Gospels. Whom has Irenaeus thought of? Who had less 
or more Gospels ? Irenaeus goes on : " For Marcion rejecting 
the whole Gospel, or to say it better, cutting himself off in fact 
from the Gospel, boasts that he has a part of the Gospel." We 
see at once what that means. The rejecting the whole Gospel is 
simply Marcion's cutting himself off from the Church and setting 
up Churches for himself. And the boasting that he has part of 
the Gospel is not Marcion's, but Irenaeus' way of putting it, or is 
rather a mixture of Irenaeus and of Marcion. Marcion would 
not have boasted and did not boast that he had a " part " of the 
Gospel. According to his conception of the case, what he had 
was the Gospel and the whole Gospel. What he rejected and cut 
out, that was not Gospel at all. Marcion therefore boasted that 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— IREN^US 151 

he, and that he alone, had the pure and genuine Gospel, without 
adulteration and corruption, in that Gospel which he had won 
from the ore in the Gospel of Luke. But that was for Irenaeus 
a mere butt end of a Gospel, a miserable excuse for a Gospel, and 
hence he puts it as he does, that Marcion boasts that he has a 
part of the Gospel. That was, then, one effort to reduce the 
number of the Gospels, or we might term it, to lessen the amount 
of the Gospel. 

The second is of a different character: "Others, however, 
in order to make the gift of the Spirit ineffective, which in 
these last days by the decree of the Father is shed abroad upon 
the human race, do not admit that form which is the Gospel 
according to John, in which the Lord promises that He will 
send the Comforter, but reject at the same time the Gospel and 
the prophetic spirit. Wretched men, indeed,, who wish to be 
false prophets," — again a word of Irenseus', for they regard 
themselves, of course, as true and genuine prophets, — " but repel 
the prophetic grace from the Church. ... We are given to under- 
stand, moreover, that such men as these as little accept the 
Apostle Paul. For in the Epistle which is to the Corinthians, he 
spoke most diligently of prophetic gifts, and knows of men and 
women prophesying in the Church. By all these things therefore, 
sinning against the Spirit of God, they fall into the sin that 
cannot be forgiven." Who are these people who reject the 
Gospel of John ? They appear to be certain Christians whom a 
later writer, Epiphanius, calls Alogians, or people who were 
against the Logos, the Word. We might call them No-Worders. 
Singularly enough, we know very little about them. With them 
Irenaeus has exhausted his catalogue of the people who are 
content with fewer than the four Gospels. The great point for us 
is, that these two sets of people bring in no new Gospels. 
They had our four Gospels in their hands, and they chose on the 
one hand to content themselves with a mutilated Luke, and on 
the other hand to be satisfied with Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
and to let John go. Marcion did have great influence, as we 
have seen. These others, the rejecters of John, appear to have 
had as good as no influence, for we find almost no traces of 
them. They are celebrated as being about the only persons in 
ancient times who were so lacking in judgment as to give up that 
Gospel. We cannot, however, discover any tokens that their 



152 THE CANON 

notions found favour in wide circles. We are at a loss to place 
them. But what does the remark about the Epistles of Paul 
mean? We cannot tell. Nothing of that kind is to be found 
elsewhere attached to the special rejection of John. It is 
possible that the thought is simply a conclusion of Irenaeus' : 
They reject the spiritual Gospel. They therefore reject spiritual 
gifts. First Corinthians praises spiritual gifts. Therefore — which, 
of course, would not in the least follow by any logical necessity — 
these people reject the Apostle Paul. 

If those two sets of people had fewer Gospels, who had more ? 
Here again we are eager to learn of some new Gospel. We shall 
be disappointed : " But those who are from Valentinus, being 
again beyond all fear, bringing forward their own writings," — 
we might almost say concoctions ; they are things that the 
Valentinians have "written together," have "scraped together in 
writing " for themselves, — " boast that they have more than the 
Gospels themselves are. In fact, they have proceeded to such 
boldness, that they call that which was written by them not very 
long since the Gospel of truth, which does not agree at all with 
the Gospels of the apostles, so that they cannot even have a 
Gospel without blasphemy. For if that which they bring forward 
is the Gospel of truth, and this is moreover unlike those (Gospels) 
that have been handed down to us by the apostles, as anyone 
who cares can learn, as is clear from the Scriptures themselves, 
then that which is handed down from the apostles is not the 
Gospel of truth." This gives us nothing new. We have an 
inkling of the state of the case with the Valentinians. The 
Valentinians had and used our four Gospels. They — or some 
one of them — wrote a book upon the ideas of their system, and 
they unfortunately took a fancy to call it a Gospel. So far as we 
can see, they did not for a moment purpose to put it in the place 
of any one of the Gospels or of all four Gospels. It was a totally 
different thing. At the same time the use of the word Gospel 
made it easy for Irenaeus to decry their action in the above way. 
It would further not be at all impossible that other uninformed 
people, and let us concede it, even some less informed Valen- 
tinians, might have taken the title Gospel in the same sense, and 
have supposed that the book was meant to be a proper Gospel. 
We should not fail to observe that on the one hand this use of 
this title indicates a high valuation of the name Gospel in the 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— IREN^US 1 53 

circles in which Valentinus lived. Far more important, however, 
is the observation, that the isolation in which this use of the 
word by the Valentinians stands is really, if I mistake not, in 
itself a most thorough refutation of that view of the second 
century and of our Gospels, which represents the century, and 
especially the former half of it, as deluged with all manner of 
Gospels, some bad, some indifferent, but a large number quite 
good, which Gospels then disappeared of a sudden, because the 
Church had arbitrarily settled upon our present four. 

Irenseus' high appreciation of scripture, and that of the New 
Testament as well as of the Old Testament, shines forth in a few 
sentences (4. 33, 8) which we shall understand better when we some 
day find the original Greek words for the whole ; now we have 
the Greek only for the first sixteen words : " True knowledge " — 
Gnosis — " is the teaching of the apostles and the ancient system 
of the Church through all the world, and the sign of the body of 
Christ according to the successions of the bishops, to whom 
they " — the apostles — " gave over the Church which is in each 
single place, [and] the fullest use of the Scriptures which have 
reached us in [careful] custody without corruption, consenting 
neither to addition nor to subtraction, and the text " — reading — 
" without corruption, and the legitimate and diligent explanation 
according to the Scriptures both without peril and without 
blasphemy, and the chief duty of love, which is more precious 
than knowledge, more glorious, moreover, than prophecy, and 
supereminently above all the rest of the graces." Here we 
behold as one of the main points of right Christian knowledge 
the most extended use of the Scriptures. These Scriptures, he 
says, have been handed down to us in watchful care "without 
fiction." I have written above " corruption " as a general term. 
I take it that the fiction here warded off is on the one hand the 
fictitious composition of new books, and on the other hand the 
fictitious or corrupting and changing or mutilating treatment of 
known books. In neither case does true knowledge allow of 
addition or of curtailment. The following sentence has at least 
two possible senses. It may mean a guarding of the text in the 
books from falsification. But it may refer to the reading the 
Scriptures in church, and would then mean that the reading is to 
be a direct reading, keeping exactly to the words of the text, not 
changing or paraphrasing them. If that sentence refers thus to 



154 THE CANON 

the public reading, then the following would fit well with 
homiletic commentating on the text. The explanation of the 
text must be legitimate and diligent, without running into 
dangerous questions or doctrines, and as well without blasphemy ; 
but it must above all be according to the scripture, that is to say, 
that scripture agrees with itself, and that scripture must interpret 
scripture. It seems to me that the opening with the teaching of 
the apostles and the closing with the First Corinthians' view of 
love, compels us to take the words scripture here as applying to 
the New Testament as well as to the Old. 

Before leaving Irenseus we must read a few words that 
Eusebius has saved for us from the close of one of his books. 
It was that book About the Eight that, as we saw above, he sent 
to the heretical friend Florinus who had turned Valentinian. 
Eusebius writes : " At which place, at the end of the book, 
having found a lovely note of his, we must of necessity add it 
here in this book. It reads thus : I adjure thee who dost copy 
this book by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by His glorious coming, 
in which He comes to judge living and dead, that thou compare 
what thou copiest, and that thou correct it carefully, according 
to this original, from which thou hast copied it, and that thou 
likewise copy off this oath and put it in your copy " (H. E. 5. 20). 
It was a much too small matter for the use of the oath by Christ 
and His glorious coming, but that lay in the method of thought 
of these dreamy and fiery representatives of an apocalyptic cast 
of Christianity. 

Irenseus has done well by us. He has given us a most full 
use of the' New Testament, quoting even the book of Acts at 
great length. And he has discussed for us in a very welcome 
manner the state of the question as to the valuation of the 
Gospels in his day. It is true he writes in the years between 181 • 
and 189, but his view of the books of the New Testament is not 
one that he first conceived of while writing. His view of the case 
in the year 155 was probably precisely the same. 

We have, it is true, thus far moved freely and far in the 
Church and in the Roman Empire, passing repeatedly from 
Syria in the East to Gaul in the West. Nevertheless we have to 
a great extent had more to do with the Greek language and 
with Greek writers than with other languages and with those who 
used them. The question arises whether or not we can find at 



THE AGE OF IREN^IUS— SYRIA 1 55 

this early time witnesses from some of the other literatures, from 
Churches using other languages. I personally am inclined to 
think that we can. Others think not. Let us begin with Syria. 
When did Christianity gain a foothold in Syria ? Remember the 
character of Antioch in Syria as a second capital of the Empire, 
with the wealth and the trade of Syria pouring into it, and with 
an important university. Consider, further, the Christian con- 
stellation there, and the part played by Antioch as a starting-point 
for mission journeys. Barnabas, Paul, Peter, and how many 
other eminent Christians of that time we know not, spent much 
time there. Of course the city was largely Greek, but the Syrian 
element was not, could not be, lacking. 

The free intercourse between Palestine and Antioch was 
shown distinctly at the time of the questionings about Gentile 
and Jewish Christians that found a solution on the occasion 
of the visit of a committee headed by Barnabas and Paul to the 
mother Church at Jerusalem. Now the very fact of the occurrence 
of such a question at Antioch, and the circumstance that Paul at 
Antioch openly reproved Peter for changing his habit of life at 
the coming of certain Jewish Christians from Jerusalem, seem to 
point to the presence there of at least a number of Aramaic- 
speaking Christians. Their Aramaic, if they came from Jerusalem, 
was closely related to the language of the north, for it had come 
from there. It seems to me then in every way probable that 
at that early date, speaking roughly, before the year 70, there 
were in Antioch Aramaic-speaking Christians. Edessa was not 
far from Antioch, not as far from Antioch as Damascus was. 
Nisibis was not far, not as far again beyond Edessa. If we 
should go down towards the south-east, Babylon was not three 
times as far from Antioch as Damascus was. Enough of that 
about distances. We find a reference to Peter's being at Babylon. 
It is the custom with some scholars to insist upon it that that 
was Rome and not Babylon. To me it appears to be only 
reasonable to suppose that Peter and other Christians who spoke 
Aramaic did some mission work, going out from Antioch to 
Edessa, Nisibis, and, we add because it really is named for Peter 
himself, to Babylon. 

I have no doubt, although I have not a word about it in books, 
that there were Syrian Christians in Syria itself in the three cities 
named, before the death of Paul. If anyone chooses to put it 



156 THE CANON 

all thirty years later, he will have Christians there in the year 100. 
The next wing in this castle in the air is the statement that these 
Syrian Christians of the year 70, or even of the year 100, may be 
supposed by the year 150, or at latest 170, to have reached such 
a number, and to have attained so much education and so much 
insight into the value of the Greek Gospels and Epistles, as to have 
made not merely verbal, but also written translations of them. 
In spite of the lack of external testimony, I regard the opinion 
that the Syriac version of the bulk of the New Testament books 
was in existence, say in the year 170, to be a very modest one. 
So far as we can tell, this Old Syriac translation contained all the 
books of our New Testament except the Revelation and the four 
Epistles, Second and Third John, Second Peter and Jude. The 
Revelation was at that time chiefly used in the West. Second 
and Third John were more private letters, and Second Peter was 
scarcely generally known before the close of the third century. 
That Jude should be missing seems strange. 

The Old Latin translation arose probably in North Africa. 
Rome and Southern Italy in Christian circles were too thoroughly 
Greek at first to need a Latin text. It appears to have been 
made at or soon after the middle of the second century, and to 
have been used, for example, by the translator of Irenseus. 
Tertullian, who began to write at least in the year 190, tells us 
that before the close of the second century the Christians filled 
the palace, the senate, the forum, and the camp. I think we may 
count upon the existence of this translation as early as the year 
170 at the least. It seems to have contained the four Gospels, 
the book of Acts, thirteen Epistles of Paul, First Peter, First, 
Second, and Third John, Jude, and Revelation. Perhaps it 
included Hebrews, with the name of Barnabas as author, or 
without a name at all. James and Second Peter do not show 
themselves. We may remark, that First Peter does not seem to 
have been read much in the Latin Churches. It does not, how- 
ever, appear to have been called in question. 

The Coptic translations I am inclined to date also from the 
last quarter of the second century, but some Coptic scholars think 
them to be much later. 

When we find that the Syrian and Old Latin and Coptic 
witnesses are more rare and less profuse in the second century 
than the Greek witnesses, we should never fail to recall the cir- 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— OLD LATIN 1 57 

cumstance, that the persistence and preservation of the latter 
witnesses by no means forces or even permits us, then, to conclude 
from the present lack of the former witnesses, that Christianity 
did not flourish in those lands under those races, and that there 
were no written monuments in those tongues. Greek was the 
common language then, and the number of people who spoke, 
read, and wrote Greek was, it is true, very large. This had its 
effect upon the number of books that were written in Greek. 
Whoever wished to reach a wide circle of readers was impelled to 
write Greek. And this had its effect also upon the number of 
Greek books that were preserved. A greater number of people 
took an interest in Greek books, and cared to have them copied 
off and handed down. That seems to me to be quite certain. 
Nevertheless, I do not in the least doubt that from a very early 
date, possibly not only in Syria but also in Northwestern Africa 
and in Egypt, there were many Christians, and at least a few 
Christian writings. But Syriac and Old Latin and Coptic 
Christian writings were on the one hand less, much less, plentiful 
than Greek Christian writings, because there were not so many 
people who could read them, and who therefore would order them 
to be copied off. These writings were in the next place, by 
reason of the limited range of their circulation, not so well pre- 
pared by the survival of chance copies in one place and another 
to outlive the general vicissitudes of literature. In the third 
place, the separatistical movements in those Churches did much 
to sever their few books from the use of the Church. And in 
the fourth place the political turmoils, with the attendant destruc- 
tion of cities and libraries, committed much greater havoc among 
these limited books and places ; this is the reverse of the second 
point. Could we imagine that the centre of Christianity for the 
time from Paul's first missionary journey down to the year 350 
had been in Babylon, or even in Edessa or in Nisibis, we should 
certainly have had a far different literary Christian harvest from 
those years. More would have been written in Syrian, and more 
would have been preserved. 

We are nearing the close of the second century. The Age 
of Irenseus closes with the year 200. It is pertinent at this point 
to take a review of what we have thus far seen. At this time we 
find in the hands of the Church, in the hands of the larger 
number of great Churches upon the usual lines of travel, the 



158 THE CANON 

larger part of the New Testament books. The four Gospels, the 
book of Acts, the First Epistle of Peter, the First Epistle of John, 
thirteen Epistles of Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the book 
of Revelation. It is not strange that in one place or another the 
scanty amount of Christian literature does not supply us with a 
sign of life for one book or another. That is not necessary. 
When we are doubly and triply assured, from the letter of Clement 
of Rome from the year 96, that the Epistle to the Hebrews was 
then known, valued, and almost learnt by heart by an eminent 
and ready writer in the capital of the Empire, it really does not 
make very much difference to us if we find that one man or 
another towards the close of the century has failed to use that 
book in what is preserved to us of his writings. When we find 
that that same Clement of Rome in the year 96 uses the Epistle 
of James, and that Hermas the brother of the Roman bishop 
Pius uses it profusely about the year 140, we know surely that it 
was at home at Rome early and late in this period, and it is a 
matter of supreme indifference to us when this short letter fails 
to put in an appearance in one writer or another in between or 
later. Those authors did not write in the first place chiefly for 
the purpose of telling us what books they had in their New 
Testament. We must here, then, observe that the series of books 
named above does not present itself to us at the close of this age 
of Irenaeus as a new thing. The fact is, that no single sign has 
been found that any book has been added to the list during this 
period. On the contrary, from the first to the last every Christian 
writer and even the heretical ones are clearly of the opinion that 
the writings which we now have, and which they then received or 
rejected, were on hand long before that time. If Marcion re- 
jected Matthew, Mark, and John, it was not because they were 
young, but because they did not suit him. He rejected the 
books of the Old Testament which he acknowledged to be still 
older. He rejected the Creator God not because He was a young 
God, but because according to the history of Israel He was a bad 
God, cruel, brutal, and bloodthirsty. 

We have from this period, probably from the year 196, an 
interesting example of the way in which the Churches passed 
letters from one to another. Eusebius relates (H. E. 5. 25) that 
the Palestinian bishops Narcissus and Theophilus, and with them 
Cassius, bishop of Tyre, and Clarus, bishop of Ptolemaeis, had 



THE AGE OF IREN^IUS— TRADITION 1 59 

a meeting with others to pass resolutions about the apostolical 
tradition touching the celebration of Easter. " At the close of 
the writing " — that is to say, of the utterance of these bishops, 
and that probably determined especially by the skilled and prac- 
tical writer Theophilus of Csesarea — "they add to their words 
the following : Try to distribute copies of our letters to each 
Church, so that we may not be guilty in respect to those who 
recklessly let their own souls go astray. And we make known 
to you that at Alexandria they celebrate on the same day on 
which we celebrate. For letters have reached them from us 
and us from them. So that we celebrate the holy day with one 
voice and together." These letters about Easter are a premoni- 
tion of the later following Festal Epistles of the patriarch of 
Alexandria announcing the proper play for Easter. And the 
distribution of the letters Church by Church shows how readily 
then written material could be produced and sent about among 
Christians. 

The Possibilities of Tradition. 

We have now reached, naming the year 190 as doubtless 
later than the composition of Irenseus' great work against the 
heresies, a date that is about one hundred and sixty years distant 
from the death of Jesus, one hundred and twenty-six years from 
the death of Paul, and perhaps a little over ninety years from the 
death of John, probably not ninety years from the death of Simon 
the son of Clopas, who was possibly born about the same time 
as Jesus. We have repeatedly taken occasion to call attention 
to the way in which a long life has made a bridge for us between 
extremely distant points of time. Now we shall do another 
thing. The long lives of which we have spoken have in part 
come to our notice more by chance than by any necessity of the 
historical recital, in that some small incident, like Irenaeus' need 
of writing to the heretical friend of his youth, has called forth 
the story. Now I wish to say a word or two about tradition 
in general, and to point to the possibilities of tradition, taking 
examples from modern life. I wish to show the possibility of a 
much more compact and far-reaching net covering this early field 
of Christian history. 

Let me begin with a soldier, Friedrich Weger, who in 1901 



l6o THE CANON 

was living at Breslau eighty-nine years old, still fresh and hale 
in body and mind. He was born in 1812, served in the years 
1834-1836, and took part in a parade before the Prussian King 
Friedrich Wilhelm in. and the Russian Emperor Nicholas 1. 
sixty-one years before 1901. — Another veteran celebrated in 
sound health his hundredth birthday on March 14th, 1901. 
His name was Hermann Wellemeyer, and he was a house- 
carpenter in Lengerich in Westphalia. He served in the years 
1 823-1 82 5, but he remembered distinctly the marching of the 
French and Russian and Prussian troops through Lengerich, and 
the general joy at the victory over Napoleon at Leipzig in 18 13. — 
In the year 1899 there were living in Silesia in Schwientochlowitz 
a working woman named Penkalla who was one hundred and 
four years old, and in Domnowitz the widow of a veteran, Rosina 
Nowack, who was one hundred and seven years old, and who 
told with pleasure what she had seen as a child. — And in 
the year 1904, Andreas Nicolaievitch Schmidt, a former orderly 
sergeant, was still living at Tiflis and able to go about by himself, 
although he was one hundred and twenty-two years old. He 
fought in 181 2 at Borodino, and was wounded in 1854 at 
Sebastopol. In 1858 he was sent to Siberia because he had 
let a political prisoner escape. — In a parenthesis the curious 
case may be mentioned of Sir Stephen Fox's daughters. He 
married in 1654, and his first child, a daughter, was born and 
died in 1655, three years before the death of Cromwell. After 
losing several married children, he married late in life, and his 
youngest daughter was born in 1727, seventy-two years after her 
oldest sister. This daughter lived ninety-eight years, and died in 
1825, when Queen Victoria was six years old. Thus there passed 
one hundred and seventy years between the deaths of these two 
sisters. 

But it may be objected that these are all isolated cases. 
Of course they are. Yet such isolated cases are occurring all 
over the world. In many cases it is the merest accident that 
brings such an old man to public notice. — In the year 1875, 
referring to the sixtieth anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, the 
Times newspaper in London gave the names of seventy-six 
Waterloo officers who were still alive. — A man named Johann 
Leonhard Roder, who was at the battle of Waterloo as a boy of 
fifteen, was still living at Quincy, Illinois, in January 1907. — In 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— TRADITION l6l 

the year 1899, King Albert of Saxony celebrated at Dresden the 
fiftieth anniversary of his first battle on the 13th of April 1849. 
At that celebration there were drawn up before him, in the park 
of his villa at Strehlen near Dresden, seven hundred veterans 
from that year 1849. They were all more than seventy years 
old. The king's military instructor, the oldest orderly sergeant, 
named Schurig, was there eighty-five years old and gave a toast 
to the king at lunch. There were seven hundred men whose 
memory as grown men reached back fifty and largely more years. 
Two such men would stretch over more than a century. 

The most interesting case that I know of is connected with 
Yale College. In the year 1888 a clergyman named Joseph 
Dresser Wickham, who was in his ninety-second year and still 
hearty in body and mind, was at the Alumni meeting. He had 
entered college at fifteen, in the year 181 1. In that year 181 1 
he saw and heard an alumnus who had left college in 1734, 
seventy-seven years before. That alumnus was twenty-six years 
old when he left Yale, and was one hundred and three years old 
when Wickham saw him in 181 1. In the year 1716, eighteen 
years before that alumnus left Yale, and when he was a boy 
eight years old, the college was moved from Saybrook to New 
Haven. The changing the place for the college caused much 
stir and excitement, and the eight-year-old boy remembered the 
change very well. Thus two men carried a tradition of a special 
occurrence over the space of one hundred and seventy-two years. 
Should we put that back into the second century, Irenseus the 
bishop could reach from the year 178 back to the sixth year of 
our Lord. Irenaeus at the year 150 would reach back to 22 b.c. 
Justin the martyr, who was no longer young in the year 150, 
would also reach back to 22 B.C. Do not forget Simon the son 
of Clopas dying a martyr at one hundred and twenty years. 
And if ninety-two and one hundred and three are rare old ages, 
eighty and eighty are less rare, and eighty and eighty make, from 
the twentieth year of each, one hundred and twenty years. 
Observe, however, the single persons. One of the alumni 
reached back seventy-seven years with his memory, the other 
ninety-five years. Take again the year 150 for Irenaeus and the 
older Justin. Seventy-seven years would carry them back to the 
year 73, and ninety-five years to the year 55. 

It is furthermore not to be forgotten that that time was a 
11 



1 62 THE CANON 

time at which tradition was cultivated in a much higher style 
than it is to-day. They did not have our newspapers and 
chronicles and books. Tradition was almost all they had, 
and they were used to thinking of it. They practised it care- 
fully. They narrated. They listened. They studied it over. 
They told it then to younger men. Now I wish to lay stress 
upon two things. In the first place, we know very well of a 
number of lines of tradition, for example the grandson of Jude, 
Simon the son of Clopas, the daughters of Philip the evangelist 
who had seen Paul for several days at their father's house in 
Caesarea, and whom Polycarp saw at Hierapolis, and Polycarp 
himself who probably saw John. That is enough for the 
moment. In the second place, however, if we are scientific 
enough to consider the whole growing Church from Jerusalem 
and Antioch to Ephesus and Smyrna and Thessalonica and 
Corinth and Rome and Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, and to 
conjure up to ourselves the occasional Christian societies in 
countless places in between, — if we consider this large field, and 
I shall now not say the possibility, but the necessity of there 
having been many men and women of seventy and eighty, and 
some men and women of ninety overlapping each other, we shall 
be ready to concede that the course of Christian tradition has 
not been in the least a frail and weak passage from Paul to 
Irenseus, from John to Clement of Alexandria. A judicial view 
of the field — the writer of any given statement is always to his 
own way of thinking judicial — wall refuse to suppose that at 
Antioch (Alexandria?), Smyrna, Corinth, and Rome, as repre- 
sentatives of great provinces of Christianity, there were any gaps 
in the living and seething life of the Church between Paul and 
Irenseus. 

Testimony for Separate Books. — Matthew. 

In approaching thus the year 200, what have we before us 
in the way of clear use of the books of the New Testament? 
We have in advance presupposed that the most of them were in 
existence, and where we do not hear of anything to the contrary, 
anything that excludes their early existence and proves their 
later composition, we go upon the theory that they are in use. 
Nevertheless, what do we positively and directly know about 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— MATTHEW 1 63 

their use before the year 185, before Irenseus' great work? 
Let us take up the books. The Gospel according to Matthew 
was quoted apparently in the Great Declaration written by Simon 
Magus or by some close pupil of his. Hippolytus (6. 16) gives 
the words thus : " For somewhere near, he says, is the axe to the 
roots of the tree. Every tree, he says, not bearing good fruit, is 
cut down and cast into the fire." No one will be surprised that 
he quoted loosely. We have seen how loosely good Christians 
quoted, and Simon Magus could not be expected to be more 
careful than they. For the followers of Cerinthus, and it doubt- 
less holds good also for Cerinthus himself, Epiphanius tells us 
(28. 5) directly that they used this Gospel. He says : " For they 
use the Gospel according to Matthew in part and not the whole 
of it, because of the birth list according to the flesh " ; and again 
(30. 14) : " For Cerinthus and Carpocrates using for themselves, 
it is true, the same Gospel, prove from the beginning of the 
Gospel according to Matthew by the birth list that the Christ 
was of the seed of Joseph and Mary." He may well have 
had a Gospel with a different reading in the first chapter of 
Matthew. 

The Ophites also used this Gospel. " This, they say, is what 
is spoken (Hippolytus, 5. 8 ; p. 160 [113]) : Every tree not making 
good fruit is cut down and cast into fire. For these fruits, they 
say, are only the reasonable, the living men, who come in through 
the third gate." From the seventh chapter they quote (5. 8 ; 
p. 160 [114]) : "This, they say, is what he saith : Cast not that 
which is holy to the dogs, nor the pearls to the swine, saying that 
the words about swine and dogs are the intercourse of a woman 
with a man." And again from the same chapter, turning the 
words around in memory (5. 8; p. 166 [116]): "About these 
things, they say, the Saviour spoke expressly : That narrow and 
strait is the way leading to life, and few are those entering in 
to it ; but broad and roomy is the way that leads to destruction, 
and many are they that pass through by it." And still from 
the same chapter (5. 8; p. 158 [112]) "And again, they say, the 
Saviour said : Not everyone saying to me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of the heavens, but he that doeth the 
will of My Father which is in the heavens." They give (5. 8; 
p. 160 [113]) the parable of the Sower from the thirteenth chapter 
just as anybody might quote it from memory : " And this, they 



l6\ THE CANON 

say, is what is spoken : The one sowing went forth to sow. 
And some fell by the wayside and was trodden down, and some 
on rocky ground, and sprang up, they say, and because it had 
no depth withered away and died. And some fell, they say, on 
good and fit ground, and made fruit, one a hundred, another 
sixty, another thirty. He that hath ears, they say, to hear, let 
him hear." One of their quotations brings a quite intelligible 
loose combination or confusing of two verses in the same thir- 
teenth chapter. It is a capital specimen of a wild quotation 
(5. 8; p. 152 [108]): "This, they say, is the kingdom of heaven 
lying within you like a treasure, like leaven hid in three measures 
of meal." 

Just of the same kind is the following from the twenty-third 
chapter (5. 8; p. 158 [112]) : "This, they say, is that which was 
spoken : Ye are whitened tombs, filled, they say, within with 
dead bones, because the living man is not in you." And there- 
upon they recur to the twenty-seventh chapter : " And again, 
they say, the dead shall go forth from the graves, that is to say, 
the spiritual, not the fleshly ones, being born again from the 
earthly bodies." The Sethians quote from the tenth chapter 
(5. 21 ; p. 212 [146]) : "This is, they say, that which is spoken: 
I came not to cast peace upon the earth, but a sword." Basilides 
knew this Gospel. It is the merest chance that the little we have 
from him touches Matthew, just touches it. He was speaking of 
everything having its own time (7. 27; p. 376 [243]), and 
mentioned thereat : " the wise men who beheld the star." How 
easily could he have failed to use that example, or could 
Hippolytus have failed to quote the five words ! The so-called 
letter of Barnabas uses, as was mentioned above, the technical 
phrase " it is written " for a quotation from this Gospel (ch. 4) : 
" Let us give heed, lest, as it is written, we should be found : Many 
are called, but few are chosen." These words might have been, 
yes, they may have been a common proverb in the time of Jesus, 
and the author of this letter could have quoted them as a well- 
known everyday proverb. But he does not do that. He quotes 
them as scripture, and doubtless has Matthew in view. When he 
writes (ch. 19) : " Thou shalt not approach unto prayer with an evil 
conscience," he may have the words of Jesus in Matthew in his 
mind, but it is not necessary that he should. His words (ch. 19): 
" Thou shalt not hesitate to give, nor when thou givest shalt thou 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— MATTHEW 1 65 

murmur ; but thou shalt know who is the good payer back of the 
reward," looks very much like a reference to the sixth chapter of 
Matthew. He quotes Matthew, but takes a curious view of the 
apostles when he writes (ch. 5) : " And when He chose His own 
disciples, who were going to preach His gospel, they being beyond 
all sin the most lawless ones, that He might show that He did not 
come to call righteous but sinners, then He manifested Himself to 
be a Son of God." One of his short summing-ups (ch. 7) seems 
to have Matthew's account of the trial before Pilate as a basis : 
" And they shall say : Is not this the one whom we once crucified, 
deriding and piercing and spitting (upon Him)? In truth this 
was the one who then said that He Himself was a Son of 
God." 

We have very little of what Valentinus wrote, and neverthe- 
less Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 2. 20. 114) has, as men say, 
happened to save up for us a beautiful passage from him which 
gives us a few words from Matthew. Valentinus quotes and then 
comments upon the thought. I give his first sentence and then 
a later sentence which appears to show us what his text was 
here, what reading he had : " And one is good, whose revelation 
was openly through the Son; and through Him alone could the 
heart become clean, every evil spirit being thrust out of the 
heart. ... In this manner also the heart so long as it does not 
reach wisdom, being impure, being the dwelling-place of many 
demons ; but when the only good Father turns His eyes upon it, 
it is made holy and beams with light ; and he is blessed who 
has such a heart, for he shall see God." Is not that beautiful? 
And it tells us that Valentinus knew and valued Matthew. 

Epiphanius (33. 8) has given us some quotations from 
Ptolemaeus, Valentinus' disciple, including a letter written to a 
Christian woman named Flora ; and in this he shows clearly that 
he uses Matthew. Ptolemaeus is explaining the state of the Law 
to Flora : " Thus, therefore, also the law confessed to be God's 
is divided into three parts, on the one hand into that which was 
fulfilled by the Saviour ; for the word : Thou shalt not kill, thou 
shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not swear falsely, is com- 
prised in the neither being angry, nor lusting after, nor swearing. 
And it is divided into that which is finally done away with. For 
the word : Eye for eye and tooth for tooth, being woven about 
with unrighteousness and having itself something of unrighteous- 



1 66 THE CANON 

ness, was annulled by the Saviour by the opposites. And the 
opposites annul each other : For I say unto you, Resist not evil 
at all. But if any one strike thee upon the cheek, turn to him 
also the other cheek." There we have both a quotation from 
Matthew and a summary based upon Matthew. And the 
same text that we found above in Valentinus is used again by 
Ptolemaeus in this letter, saying : " And if the perfect God is 
good according to His own nature, as He is, — for the Saviour 
declared to us that one alone is the good God, His own Father, — 
then the one of the opposite nature is characterised not only as 
bad, but also as wicked in unrighteousness." 

For another of Valentinus' pupils, the very little known 
Heracleon, we have in Origen's commentary (13. 59) on John a 
pair of sentences that point to Matthew. In one he uses the 
phrase : " Supposing that both body and soul are destroyed in 
hell." In the other : " He thinks that the destruction of the 
men of the Demiurge is made plain in the words : The sons of 
the kingdom shall go out into outer darkness." 

Among the many who indulged in the fancies of Valentinus' 
system was a man named Mark, apparently a Syrian, and his 
followers, who were called Marcosians. They are said to have 
written spurious Gospels. Yet it is plain that they used and 
treasured highly our four Gospels. For Matthew we may take 
the following which Irenseus brings from them (1. 20. 2) : "And 
to the one saying to Him : Good teacher, He confessed the truly 
good God, saying : Why dost thou call Me good ? One is good, 
the Father in the heavens. And they say that the heavens are now 
called the Eons." Again Irenaeus writes : " And because He did 
not answer to those who said to Him : With what authority doest 
Thou this? but confounded them by His return question, they 
explain that He by so speaking showed that the Father was un- 
utterable." Then Irenaeus places before us their use of the 
treasured verses in the eleventh chapter: "And again saying: 
Come to Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest. And learn of Me, (they say) that He announced 
the Father of the truth. For what they did not know, they said, 
this He promised to teach them. . . . And as the highest point 
and the crown of their theory they bring the following : I confess 
Thee, Father, Lord of the heavens and of the earth, that Thou 
hast hidden (these things) from the wise and prudent, and hast 



THE AGE OF IREN.EUS— MATTHEW 1 67 

revealed them to babes. Thus, O Father, because grace was 
granted Me before Thee. All things were given over to Me by 
My Father. And no one knows the Father except the Son, and 
the Son except the Father, and to whomsoever the Son may reveal 
Him." This, as Irenaeus then explains, they apply to their notion 
that the God of the Old Testament had not the least in common 
with the good God of the New Testament : " In these words 
they say that He shows most clearly that the Father of truth 
whom they have also discovered, was never known to anyone 
before His coming. And they wish to insist upon it that the 
Maker and Creator was ever known of all men, and that the Lord 
spoke these words of the Father who was unknown to all, whom 
they set forth." They base thus their main theory on the Gospel 
according to Matthew in this point, in which they undoubtedly 
followed in the footsteps of Valentinus. And we see, in spite of 
all that is said about other Gospels, that these are their real 
Gospels, these are their foundation and tower. 

We have already shown above that Justin Martyr appears to 
have known the Gospel according to Matthew. To make 
assurance doubly sure, we find in the Dialogue with Trypho the 
second chapter of Matthew used and discussed more than once. 
He impresses it upon the Jew that Herod got his information 
from the Jewish presbyters (ch. 78) : "For also this King Herod 
learning from the elders of your people, the wise men then coming 
to him from Arabia and saying that they knew from a star that 
appeared in the heaven that a king was born in your country, and 
we are come to worship him." Justin continues the story at 
length, combining it with Isaiah. It is in connection with this 
that he speaks, as given above, of Herod's slaying all the boys in 
Bethlehem. More than twenty chapters later (ch. 102) he returns 
to this chapter again. Here he again reverts to the journey into 
Egypt, and offers a possible objection : " And if anyone should 
say to us : Could not God have rather slain Herod ? I reply : 
Could not God at the beginning have taken away the serpent 
that it should not exist, instead of saying : I will put enmity 
between him and the woman, and his seed and her seed ? Could 
He not at once have created a multitude of men?" And he 
again reverts to this a chapter later (ch. 103). Then he gives the 
etynology of Satan from sata, an apostate, and nas, a serpent — 
SatanaS) and continues : " For this devil also at the same time 



1 68 THE CANON 

that He went up from the river Jordan, the voice having said 
to Him : Thou art My Son, I to-day have begotten Thee, in the 
memoirs of the apostles it is written, coming up to Him also 
tempted Him so far as to say to Him : Worship me, and that 
Christ answered him : Go behind Me, Satan, the Lord thy God 
shalt thou worship, and Him alone shalt thou serve." Again 
he writes (ch. 105) : "For also urging on His disciples to surpass 
the method of life of the Pharisees, and if not that they should 
understand that they will not be saved, that He said, this is 
written in the memoirs : Except your righteousness abound above 
the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
the heavens." At another place he writes (ch. 107) : "And that 
He was going to rise on the third day after being crucified, it is 
written in the memoirs that men from your race " — that is to say, 
Jews, like Trypho — " disputing with Him said : Show us a sign. 
And He answered to them : An evil and adulterous generation 
seeketh a sign, and a sign shall not be given unto them " — unto 
the people of that generation — " save the sign of Jonah." In the 
fragment on the Resurrection (ch. 2), Justin quotes Matthew : 
" The Saviour having said : They neither marry nor are given in 
marriage, but shall be like angels in the heaven." Of course he 
quotes here as elsewhere loosely. 

We have already seen what Papias says about the work of 
Matthew in writing the Sayings of the Lord in Hebrew. I am 
inclined to suppose, as I have already explained, that that refers 
to the book which lies at the basis of the three synoptic Gospels. 
It may be that Papias as well as Eusebius, supposed that 
Hebrew book to have been accurately translated in and to be 
precisely our Matthew. The knowledge of Hebrew was not so 
widespread as to compel us to suppose that the assumption that 
the Hebrew book agreed with our Matthew was correct. Nothing 
indicates in the least that Papias did not have and hold and 
treasure our four Gospels. 

As for Athenagoras, he quotes Matthew loosely, possibly 
bringing in a word or two from Luke. He writes (ch. 11): 
" What then are the words on which we have been brought up ? 
I say unto you : Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, 
pray for those who persecute you, so that ye may be sons of your 
Father in the heavens, who causes His sun to rise on the evil and 
good, and rains upon just and unjust." One of his summaries 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— MATTHEW 1 69 

(ch. 11) seems also to point certainly to the same Sermon on the 
Mount : " For they do not place before us words, but show good 
deeds : being struck, not to strike back, and being robbed, not 
to go to court, to give to those who ask, and to love the neigh- 
bours as themselves." 

Theophilus, in the passage above touched (3. 14), gives 
Matthew thus : " But the gospel : Love ye, it saith, your enemies, 
and pray for those who revile you. For if ye love those who 
love you, what reward have ye ? This do also the robbers and 
the publicans. And those who do good, it teaches not to boast, 
that they may not be men-pleasers." The following (2. 34) points 
doubtless to Matthew : " And all things whatsoever a man does 
not wish to be done to himself, that he should neither do to 
another." 

Tatian seems to have used Matthew in a very strained way to 
back up his asceticism. Clement of Alexandria describes the 
agreement of the Law and the Gospel in reference to marriage, 
and then gives the forced interpretation of Tatian (Strom. 3. 12, 
86 and 87) : "Saying that the Saviour spoke of the begetting of 
children, on earth not to lay up treasures where moth and rust 
destroy." And a few lines farther on : " And likewise they take 
that other saying : The sons of that age, the word about the 
resurrection of the dead : They neither marry nor are given in 
marriage." 

But we have given enough passages to show that, during the 
time that we have thus far paid attention to, the Gospel according 
to Matthew was used freely and in circles widely distant from 
each other, and as a book that had a position out of the common 
run of books. Let me say at once that we should not look for 
such a general application of Mark and Luke. The position of 
Matthew as the first of the four Gospels, and perhaps the naive 
character of the history of the birth and temptation of Jesus in it, 
have secured to it at all times, and, if I am not mistaken, still 
secure to it to-day, a frequency of perusal that the two other 
synoptic Gospels cannot equal. Matthew is read more than the 
others, save perhaps by the people who with heroic consistency 
compel themselves to pay like honour to every part of scripture, 
and who therefore read in unvarying course from the first 
chapter of Genesis up to the last chapter of the book of 
Revelation. 



\yO THE CANON 

Mark. 

For the Gospel of Mark we shall have little to bring forward, 
for the reason just given. There is a curious coincidence with 
Mark in Justin Martyr's dialogue, which shows us that he knew 
and used this Gospel. Only this Gospel gives us the name of 
Sons of Thunder for the sons of Zebedee, and it gives it to us in 
the same list of the apostles in which it tells us that Jesus called 
Simon by the name Peter. Justin writes (ch. 106): "And the 
saying that He changed the name of Peter, one of the apostles, 
and that it is written in his " — " his " memoirs is here then the 
Gospel according to Mark which was regarded, as we have seen, 
as based partly on what Peter told Mark — " memoirs that this 
took place, and that with him also others, two brothers, who were 
the sons of Zebedee, were supplied with the new name Boanerges, 
which is Sons of Thunder, this was a token that He was that one 
by whom also the name Jacob was given to Israel and to Auses 
Jesus" — Joshua. Perhaps Justin has the close of Mark in his 
thoughts in the following passage in the fragment about the 
Resurrection (ch. 9), although he also brings near the beginning 
words that, recall to us Matthew : " Why then did He rise with the 
flesh that had suffered, were it not for the purpose of showing the 
fleshly resurrection ? And wishing to confirm this, His disciples 
not believing that He had truly risen in the body, while they were 
gazing and doubting, He said to them : Have ye not yet faith ? 
He said : See that it is I. And He permitted them to touch Him ; 
and He showed them the prints of the nails in His hands. And 
when they had recognised him from all sides, that it was he and 
in the body, he begged them to eat with him, so that by this 
they should learn certainly that He was truly risen in the flesh. 
And He ate honeycomb and fish. And thus having shown 
them that it was truly a resurrection of flesh, wishing to show 
them also this — as is spoken : your dwelling is in heaven — that 
it was not impossible even for flesh to come up into heaven, He 
was taken up into heaven as He was in the flesh, they gazing 
at Him." As for Papias, we have already seen how very de- 
finitely he described the writing of the Gospel by Mark in 
connection with what Peter had told him about Jesus. And 
we have seen that the Muratorian fragment seems to give the 
same or a like view of the case. 



THE ACE OF IRENiEUS— LUKE 171 



Luke. 

The Gospel of Luke is more largely used. It was a fuller 
and more attractive book than Mark. The Ophites refer to it. 
Hippolytus speaks of their mentioning both Assyrian and 
Phrygian mysteries, and joins to the latter (5. 7 ; p. 140 [100, 101]) : 
" The blessed nature of things past and things present and things 
to come, which is at one and the same time concealed and re- 
vealed, which he says is the kingdom of heavens sought within a 
man. Then they quote the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. The 
words in Luke are : " For behold the kingdom of God is within 
you." We know how readily the kingdom of heaven or the 
heavens is written for the kingdom of God. That is one of the 
instances of the influence of the Gospel according to Matthew. 
A similar citation of the same text by the Ophites was given 
above. One passage that they use (5. 7 ; p. 142 [102]) looks a 
little like the seven times sinning of the brother as given by 
Luke : " And this is that which is spoken, they say, in the scrip- 
ture : Seven times the righteous will fall and will rise again." If 
they have not this place in view, it is hard to say what had 
induced the form of the sentence. A few lines later they give 
the verse we have so often found in use among the heretics : 
" This one they say is alone good, and about him they said that 
was spoken by the Saviour : Why dost thou say that I am good ? 
One is good, My Father in the heavens, who causes His sun to 
rise upon just and unjust, and rains upon saints and sinners." 
The fact that they tie the words from Matthew on to the words 
from Luke only shows how carelessly they quote from memory. 
Another passage or two in Luke seem to be touched in the 
following phrase (5. 7 ; p. 144 [103]) : "Like a light [not] under 
a bushel, but put on the candlestick, a sermon preached upon 
the houses, in all streets and in all byways and at the houses 
themselves." 

Basilides interprets Luke's words of the angel to Mary in the 
sense of his system (7. 26 ; p. 374 [241]) : " The light came down 
from the Seven, which came down from the Eight above to the 
son of the Seven, upon Jesus the son of Mary, and He was 
enlightened, having been enkindled by the light shining upon 
Him. This is, he says, what was spoken : Holy Spirit shall come 



172 THE CANON 

upon thee, the spirit from the sonship having passed through the 
boundary spirit to the Eight and the Seven as far as Mary, and 
power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, the power of 
judgment from the peak above [through] the Demiurge down to 
the creation, which is to the Son." The same passage is used by 
Valentinus (Hipp. 6. 35): "When, then, the creation came to 
an end, and it was necessary that the revelation of the sons of 
God, that is to say, of the Demiurge, should take place, [the 
uncovering of] the hidden condition in which the psychical 
man was hidden and had a veil over his heart ; when, then, 
the veil was to be taken away and these mysteries were to be 
seen, Jesus was born of Mary the virgin according to the word 
spoken : Holy Spirit shall come upon thee. Spirit is the 
Wisdom. And the power of the Most High shall overshadow 
thee. The Most High is the Demiurge. For which reason that 
which is born of thee shall be called holy." 

Heracleon seems to allude to Luke in his reference to a most 
original way of branding the sheep in the Christian flock. It is 
Clement of Alexandria who tells us of it. Clement says (Eel. 
Proph. 25), in speaking of John the Baptist's words, that the one 
coming after him would baptize " with spirit and fire. But no 
one baptized with fire. Yet some, as Heracleon says, marked 
with fire the ears of those who were sealed" — "baptized." 
Irenaeus and Epiphanius say of the Carpocratians that they 
branded their ears. Clement of Alexandria also quotes the 
passage from Luke : " And when they shall bring you before 
synagogues," and then tells us directly that Heracleon comments 
on it (Strom. 4. 9. 71): "Heracleon, the most approved of the 
Valentinian school, explaining this passage, says word for word 
that confession is on the one hand in faith and in manner of 
life, and on the other hand with the voice. The confession, 
then, with the voice takes place also before the authorities, which, 
he says, many in an unsound way regard as the only confession ; 
but even hypocrites can confess this confession." There is, then, 
no room for doubting that Heracleon knew and valued Luke. 
It does not, however, follow from this passage that he wrote a 
commentary on the whole Gospel. He may have treated this 
and other passages singly in connection with discussions upon 
the Valentinian system. Luke was one of their books. The 
wide spread of that system and of its many branches and side 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— LUKE 1 73 

developments makes the acknowledgment of our four Gospels 
upon the part of the Valentinians of extreme importance for the 
general acceptance of these Gospels in all Christian circles before 
the time of Valentinus. He did not invent or write these books 
He found them in stated use, and used them too. 

Justin Martyr gives us two allusions to Luke in one breath, 
and continues the sentence with a phrase from Matthew. Let 
us look at the passage (Dial. 103) carefully. "For in the 
memoirs, which I say were composed by His apostles and by 
those who followed with them " — those who followed with them 
refers here directly to the same Greek word as the one used by 
Luke of himself at the beginning of his Gospel, refers directly to 
Luke himself who is the only one to give us the phrase that is 
pointed out — " that sweat flowed down in blood drops " — here 
the word blood, which Luke puts in, is left out, but the Greek 
word used for drops is especially used for drops of blood, half 
congealed — "He praying and saying: Let this cup, if it be 
possible, pass by." The words of this petition are rather the 
words of Matthew than the words of Luke. We have, however, 
no reason to think that Justin meant to change from one Gospel 
to another. He is full of his theme, and totally regardless of 
trifles of expression. He goes to the point, and he gives the 
point aright. It should be observed, that his drawing these 
words unconsciously from Matthew here, although he begins with 
Luke, is not to be used as a sign that his manuscript of Luke 
here had a reading of Matthew in it. Justin did not look at the 
text of either Gospel. He quoted from memory. The fact that 
he brings in Matthew is only another proof of the prevailing, 
certainly unconscious, tendency to which attention was called 
above, to use Matthew more than the other synoptic Gospels. 

Again, Justin cites Luke and follows it up with various words 
from Matthew. We have here to do with Luke alone. He 
writes (Apol. 1. 16): "And about being ready to endure evil 
and to be servants to all men and to be without anger, what He 
said is this : To him that striketh thy cheek, offer also the other 
one, and thou shalt not forbid the one taking thy garment or thy 
coat." It is hardly necessary to say that that is loose quoting 
and from memory. We are now accustomed to this habit of 
Justin's. In a like hapless way he joins Mark and Luke (Apol. 
1. 76): "For if through the prophets in a hidden way it was 



174 THE CANON 

announced that the Christ would be a suffering one and after 'hat 
ruling over all, still even then that could not be conceived of by 
anybody until He moved the apostles to herald these things 
clearly in the Scriptures. For He cried before being crucified : 
It is necessary that the Son of Man suffer many things, and be 
rejected by the scribes and Pharisees, and be crucified ; and on 
the third day rise again." Here we have directly from Justin 
the statement that what the apostles wrote, that is to say, that 
not only the Old Testament, but also the New Testament, was 
scripture. And that was spoken, moreover, to Trypho the Jew. 
Justin quotes the same passage or rather passages twice besides 
this in his Dialogue, and the words are each time a trifle different. 
■It is head work, not out-of-book work. Just before the last 
quotation he gives another passage from Luke and puts centi- 
pedes in, which is certainly still more vivid : " And again in other 
words He said : I give you power to tread upon snakes and 
scorpions and centipedes, and upon every might of the enemy." 
He could " remember" a fitting word right into the text without 
the least difficulty. As for Hegesippus, we have already seen 
that in his account of the death of James the Just, the last words 
of James agree with the words of Jesus in Luke asking God to 
forgive his murderers. We saw that Theophilus of Antioch had 
chiefly to do with the Old Testament, but he knows and uses 
Luke. He writes (2. 13) : "And the power of God is shown in 
this, that at the first He makes what is, out of things not existing 
and as He wills. For what is impossible with men is possible 
with God." It is clear that the Gospel according to Luke is in 
wide use in the Church. 

John. 

Thus far we have found that the three Gospels called the 
synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, were in use in the 
Church, and we have understood why the Gospel according to 
Mark was less frequently quoted than the other two. The Gospel 
according to John stands by itself. It was undoubtedly, I think, 
written after the other three, and probably towards the close of the 
first century. If we remember that the Christians of the earliest 
years sought eagerly the accounts of Jesus' life, we might suppose, 
on the one hand, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke would be 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— JOHN 1 75 

preferred to John because they give so many little details of what 
Jesus did and so many short and striking utterances of Jesus ; and, 
on the other hand, that John would be slighted because he gives 
so little of Jesus' movements, and such long and lofty discourses. 
And we should not be surprised if the late origin of John should 
cause it to be less used and to have less authority than the other 
three. Let us see. 

Simon Magus in speaking of the beginning of all things as 
infinite power, appears to refer to the preface to John. Hippolytus 
writes (6. 9; p. 236 [163]), that Simon, after pointing to the 
habitation in which the book of the revelation of voice and name 
out of the intelligence of the great and infinite power is found 
" Says that this habitation is the man born of bloods ; and he 
says that the infinite power dwells in him, which is the root of 
all things." The reference to John is there all the more likely 
because Simon is speaking of the beginning. In another place 
Simon may possibly refer to Jesus' words to the Samaritan 
woman, when he says (6. 19; pp. 254, 256 [175]) that Jesus 
"seemed to suffer in Judea, not having suffered, but having 
appeared to the Jews as Son, and in Samaria as Father, and 
among the rest of the nations as Holy Spirit ; and that He 
suffered Himself to be called by whatever name men chose to 
call Him." I do not think that that needs to be a reference to 
John. 

The Ophites quote John more than once. We begin with 
the preface to John (5. 8; p. 150 [107]): "For all things, they 
say, were made by Him, and without Him nothing was made. 
And what was made in Him is life." They referred also to the 
water made wine (5. 8 ; p. 152 [108]): "And this is the water, 
that in that good marriage, which Jesus turning made wine. 
This, they say, is the great and true beginning of signs which 
Jesus made in Cana of Galilee, and revealed the kingdom of the 
heavens." The kingdom of the heavens is the phrase of Matthew. 
The third chapter and the conversation with Nicodemus are 
clearly known to them (5. 7 ; p. 148 [106]) : " For mortal, they say, 
is all the birth below, but immortal that which was born above ; 
for it is born of water alone and Spirit, spiritual, not fleshly. But 
that which is below is fleshly. This is, they say, that which is 
written : That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which 
is born of the Spirit is spirit. This is according to them spiritual 



176 THE CANON 

birth." Again, they name the living water of which Jesus spoke 
to the Samaritan woman (5. 7; p. 140 [100]): "For the 
announcement of the bath is according to them nothing else 
than the leading into unfading joy the one bathed according 
to them in living water and anointed with an unspeakable 
anointing." Someone might be inclined to think that this 
phrase had nothing to do with John ; but just as as if to prove 
the point they refer to the living water in another place (5. 9 ; 
p. 174 [121, 122]): "And we are, they say, the spiritual ones, 
those who choose for themselves the habitation from the living 
water of the Euphrates flowing through the midst of Babylon, 
walking through the true gate, which is Jesus the blessed." 
Observe the allusion to John in the last phrase too. 

But we must add further for the living water the direct 
quotation of the verse, — a quotation which is all the more valuable 
because it, in its freedom, does not give the word living alone, but 
also the word welling up, springing up, and yet leaves out ever- 
lasting life. Speaking of the river Euphrates (5. 9 ; p. 172 [121]) : 
" This, they say, is the water which is above the firmament, about 
which, they say, the Saviour spoke : If thou knewest who it is 
that asketh thee, thou wouldst have asked from Him and He 
would have given thee to drink living water welling up." In 
another passage they follow up the Samaritan story (5. 9 ; p. 166 
[117]): "For a spirit, they say, is God. Wherefore, they say, 
neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall the true 
worshippers worship, but in spirit. For spiritual, they say, is 
the worship of the perfect ones, not fleshly. And the spirit, they 
say, is there where the Father is, and is named also the Son, 
being born from this Father." The quotation is free enough, 
but it is beyond doubt a quotation from John. 

A like freedom is shown in the following from the fifth 
chapter of John (5. 8; p. 154 [109]): "This is, they say, that 
which is spoken : We heard His voice, but we did not see His 
form." From the sixth chapter (5. 8; p. 158 [112]): "About 
this, they say, the Saviour spoke : No one can come to Me, unless 
My heavenly Father draw some one." And they add : " It is 
altogether difficult to receive and accept this great and unspeak- 
able mystery." From the same chapter the following words are 
drawn, but they are mixed up with other words from John and 
from the synoptists (5. 8; p. 152 [109]: "This, they say, is 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— JOHN 1 77 

what the Saviour spoke : If ye do not drink My blood and eat 
My flesh ye shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens. 
But even though ye drink, He says, the cup which I drink, 
whither I go, thither ye cannot enter in." Then they combine 
the ninth and the first chapter of John (5. 9; p. 172 [121]): 
"And if anyone, they say, is blind from birth, and not having 
beheld the true light that lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world, through us let him look up and see. . . ." 
Again they quote from the tenth chapter, using the word gate 
instead of door. At this point the word is the more fitting 
because they had just cited Genesis (5. 8; p. 156 [in]): "This 
is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of 
heaven. Therefore, they say, Jesus saith : I am the true gate." 
The Peratae say (5. 16; p. 194 [134]): "This is the great 
beginning, about which it is written. About this, they say, it is 
spoken : In the beginning was the word " — and so on until — 
"what was made in him is life. And in him, they say, Eve 
was made, Eve is life." Again they say: "This is that which is 
spoken (5. 16; p. 192 [134]) : And as Moses lifted up the 
serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up." 
They quote the following freely (5. 12; p. 178 [125]): " This is, 
they say, that which is spoken: For the Son of Man did not 
come to destroy the world, but that the world should be saved 
through Him." They contrast to the Father in the heavens, 
from whom the Son comes, the evil Demiurge (5. 17; p. 196 
[136]): "Your father is from the beginning a manslayer, he 
speaks of the ruler and Demiurge of matter, ... for his work 
worketh corruption and death." They quote aright the door 
(5. 17 ; p. 198 [137]) : "This, they say, is that which is spoken : 
I am the door." 

The Sethians give a long and complicated explanation of the 
birth from water, and combine with it a coming down from above 
on the part of God and spirit and light, and they continue that 
the perfect man not only must needs enter into the womb of the 
virgin, but also that he then was cleansed from the impurities of 
that womb, and drank the cup of living water welling up, which 
it is in every way necessary that the one should drink who is 
going to put off the servant form and put on the heavenly 
garment." Hippolytus quotes also the same verse from the 
Gnostic Justin, whom he discusses immediately after the Sethians, 
12 



178 THE CANON 

and apparently as one of them. Justin says that the earthly and 
psychical men are washed in the water below the firmament, but 
the spiritual living men in the living water above the firmament, 
and he refers to the book of Baruch and to the oath of "our 
father Elohim." After this Father had sworn and had seen what 
no eye had seen (5. 27; p. 230 [158]): "He drinks from the 
living water, which is a purifying bath to them as they think," — 
I take it, to the Sethians — " a spring of living water welling up." 
In an extremely disagreeable connection reference is made to 
the scene in which Jesus entrusts Mary to John, and synoptic 
words are united closely to those drawn from John (5. 26 ; 
p. 228 [157]) : "Woman, thou hast thy Son, that is the psychical 
and earthly man " — that which was left upon the cross, — " and 
He, placing His spirit in the hands of the Father, ascended to 
the Good." The Greek text seems to demand the rendering : 
placing or taking in His hands the spirit of the Father, as if this 
spirit were the medium of the power to ascend. We have already 
given above two passages in which the noted Gnostic Basilides 
quoted John. 

Ignatius the Antiochian bishop speaks to the Magnesians 
of God (ch. 8) : " Who revealed Himself through Jesus Christ 
His Son who is his Word, going forth from silence " — a Gnostic 
phrase, — "who was well-pleasing in every respect to Him that 
sent Him." That gives us at once two plain allusions to John. 
To the Philadelphians (ch. 7) he writes: "The spirit" — this is 
here Ignatius' own spirit — "is not led astray, being from God. 
For he knoweth whence it cometh and whither it goeth, and 
reproves the things which are hidden." He tells the Romans 
(ch. 7) : " The ruler of this world wishes to make a prey of me, 
and to corrupt my thought of God." Just after that he refers 
to the living water : " For living I write to you, wishing to die. 
My longing is crucified, and there is no fire in me loving matter. 
But there is water living and speaking in me, saying within 
me : Come to the Father ! " And a line later : " I wish for 
God's bread, which is . the flesh of Jesus Christ, the one from 
the seed of David, and I wish the potion His blood, which is 
His love incorruptible." He speaks to the Philadelphians (ch. 9) 
of the high priest : " He being the door of the Father, through 
which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the prophets and the 
apostles and the church enter in." It is plain that Ignatius is 



THE AGE OF IRENvEUS— JOHN 1 79 

full and running over with the Gospel of John, even if he does 
not copy off whole paragraphs of it for us. 

Valentinus the Gnostic shows us that he knows the Gospel 
of John very well. We saw above that his whole system seems 
to proceed from this Gospel. Hippolytus, condensing Valentinus's 
words, writes (6. 35): "Therefore all the prophets and the law 
spoke forth from the Demiurge," from a foolish God, he says, 
fools knowing nothing. On this account, he says, the Saviour 
saith : " All who came before Me are thieves and robbers." 
Ptolemaeus quotes from the preface to John in his letter to Flora 
(Epiph. 33) : " Moreover He [the Saviour] says that the making 
of the world was His own, and that all things were made by 
Him and that without Him nothing was made." And Irenaeus 
gives us another quotation of his from the same preface (Haer. 
1. 8. 5): "And he says that the Son is truth and life, and that 
the Word became flesh. Whose glory we beheld, he says, and 
His glory was such as that of the only begotten, which was 
given to Him by the Father, full of grace and truth. And 
He speaks thus : And the Word became flesh and dwelt among 
us, and we saw His glory as of the Only-Begotten by the Father, 
full of grace and truth. Exactly therefore he also showed forth 
the Four, saying : Father and Grace and the Only-Begotten and 
Truth. Thus John spoke about the first Eight and the mother 
of all Eons. For he said : Father and Grace and Only-Begotten 
and Truth and Word and Life and Man and Church." The 
name John is doubtless put in by Irenaeus. And Irenaeus refers 
to the attempt to show Jesus' distress or perplexity (Haer. 
1. 8. 2) : " And His consternation likewise, in that which was 
spoken : And what I shall say, I know not," which points to the 
twelfth chapter of John. 

As for Heracleon, whom Origen calls an acquaintance of 
Valentinus', and whose commentary on John he often quotes in 
his own commentary on that Gospel, Origen says, for example 
(2. 14 [8]): "He adds to the not one" — that is: and without 
him was not one thing made which was made — " of the things 
in the world and in the creation." Origen charges him with 
forcing interpretations, and that without testimony to back up 
what he says. How sharply he looked at Heracleon's words we 
can see by another passage (6. 15 [8]): "The difference 'the 
prophet' and 'prophet' has escaped many people, as also it did 



l8o THE CANON 

Heracleon, who says in just so many words : that then John 
confessed not to be the Christ, but also not a prophet and not 
Elias." And he adds that Heracleon ought to have examined 
the matter more carefully before he said that. Origen tells us 
(6. 40 [24]) that Heracleon read Bethany and not Bethabara 
for the place where John was baptizing. Again he writes (6. 60) : 
" Heracleon again at this passage, without any preparation and 
without bringing references, declares that John spoke the words : 
Lamb of God, as a prophet, and the words : That taketh away 
the sins of the world, as more than a prophet," and Origen con- 
tinues to describe Heracleon's explanation of the verses. We 
need nothing more than that to prove that Heracleon was 
thoroughly at home in John. 

We have not, so far as I know, any reference to John in 
what is left of Marcion's words. We know that he only 
accepted the Gospel of Luke. Nevertheless we find a word or 
two in Hippolytus' account of Apelles, a disciple of Marcion's 
which can scarcely have come from any other source than 
John. The curious and the interesting thing is that Apelles 
combines this with words from Luke. Perhaps he thought he 
was only quoting Luke, although he was adding what he had 
really read in John. I give parts of the passage (7. 38) : 
"And that Christ had come down from the power above and 
was its Son, and that this one was not born of the virgin, and 
that the one appearing was not fleshless he says, . . . and that 
after three days having risen He appeared to the disciples, 
showing the marks of the nails and of His side, persuading them 
that it was He and not a phantasm, but that He was in the 
flesh. . . . And thus He went to the good Father, leaving 
behind the seed of the life to the world to those who believe 
through the disciples." The prints of the nails and the side 
are from John, and the expression the seed of the life sounds 
much like John. 

As for Hermas, we have seen that dreams are not fields 
for quotations, yet he seems to have used John. He writes, 
for example : " It was necessary for them, he says, to go up 
through water, that they may be made alive, for they could not 
otherwise enter into the kingdom of God." The allusion in the 
latter part seems to be to the conversation with Nicodemus, 
and then the words through water and be made alive remind 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— JOHN l8l 

us of the being born again. Explaining to Hennas the rock 
and the gate the shepherd tells him (Sim. 9. 12) : "This rock 
and the gate is the Son of God." And again : " Therefore 
the gate was new, so that those about to be saved should 
enter in by it into the kingdom of God." That is the 
word of Jesus: "I am the door," John io 7 - 9 . Speaking of 
the sheep he says (Sim. 9. 31): "But if He shall have found 
some of these scattered, woe shall be to the shepherds," io 12 - 13 . 
Jesus receives commands and power from the Father (Sim. 5. 6) : 
" He then having cleansed the sins of the people showed them 
the paths of life, giving them the law which He received from His 
Father. Thou seest, he says, that He is Lord over the people, 
having received from His Father all power." The homily, which 
used to be called Second Clement, appears to point to John's 
preface when it says (9. 5); "If Christ the Lord who saved us, 
being at the first spirit, became flesh, i 14 , and thus called us, 
so also we shall in this flesh receive our reward. Let us love 
each other, 4 7 - 12 , so that we may all come into the kingdom 
of God." 

We have already seen that Justin Martyr used the story 
about Nicodemus, and we have besides learned how recklessly 
he quotes from memory. He calls Jesus the Word (Apol. 
1. 63): "The Word of God is His Son," i 1 * 18 . And again 
(Apol. 1. 63) : "These words have become a proof that the Son 
of God and apostle Jesus is the Christ, who was formerly the 
Word, . . . now, however, by the will of God become man 
for the human race," i 1 - 14 . He approaches in the following 
the only [begotten] (Apol. 2. 6): "And His Son, the one 
called alone by way of eminence Son, the Word being with 
Him and begotten before the creatures, when at first He 
created and ordered all things through Him." That is from 
John, i 1 " 3, 18 , through and through. In another place he writes 
of certain opinions of the Jews (Apol. t. 63) : " For those 
saying that the Son is the Father are proved to be men who 
neither understand the Father nor who know that there is a 
Son unto the Father of all things, who is the Word and the 
first born of God, and is God," i 1 - 18 . Again he says (Apol. 
1. 32): "And the first power after the Father of all things 
and ruler God is also a Son the Word, who in what manner 
being made flesh He became a man, i 14 - 18 , we shall say in 



I 82 THE CANON 

the following." That can only be from John. Again (Apol. 
i. 32): "He declared that Christ has blood, but not from the 
seed of man but from the power of God, i 13 ." Again (Apol. 
1. 5) : "The Word being formed and becoming man and being 
called Jesus Christ, i 14 ." Again : " And Jesus Christ alone was 
born particularly a son to God, being his Word and first born 
and power, i 18 ." Justin says that the heathen philosophers 
and poets and writers (Apol. 2. 13): "Each uttered it clearly, 
seeing something related to them from the part of the divine 
Word which was scattered abroad. ... As many things there- 
fore as are well spoken by all belong to us the Christians, for 
we worship with God and love the Word from the never born 
and unutterable God, since also He became man on our account, 
x i. 14." Again he writes (Dial. 105): "For as I showed before, 
this one was the Only-Begotten to the Father of all things, i 18 , 
Word and power sprung especially from Him, and afterwards 
becoming man by the virgin, as we learned from the Memoirs." 
The Gospel of John must have been one of the Memoirs. He 
writes of John the Baptist from the Gospel according to John 
(Dial. 88): "The men supposed that He was the Christ; to 
whom also He cried : I am not the Christ, but the voice of one 
crying, i 20 - 23 ." Jesus says that He only does what the Father 
teaches Him, what pleases the Father, and Justin writes (Dial. 
56): "For I say that He never did anything except what He 
that made the world, above whom there is no other God, 
wished Him to do and to speak, 4 s4 5 19 - 30 7 16 8 28 - 29 i 2 49 - 50 " 
(comp. Dial. 56). That covers a number of passages in John. 
Justin speaks twice of the man blind from birth, whom we 
find only in John 9 1 " 41 . We saw in the Muratorian fragment 
that the First Epistle of John was mentioned with the Gospel. 
A phrase in Justin (Dial. 123) reminds us both of the Gospel 
and of the First Epistle and in the Epistle of a singular 
reading : " And we are called true children of God and we 
are, those who keep the commandments of the Christ, 1 John 
3 1 - 22 ." Justin must have known the Gospel of John very well. 

As for Papias, who gave us such, clear statements about 
Matthew and Mark, we are compelled to take a second-hand 
witness. But it speaks so definitely that it can scarcely invent 
the fact. A short preface to John in a manuscript in the Vatican 
Library says that Papias speaks of John at the close of his five 



THE AGE OF IREN/EUS— ACTS 1 83 

books, and declares apparently that Papias himself wrote it at 
John's dictation. That is probably a mistake for Prochorus. 
Again we come to the First Epistle, for Eusebius tells us that 
Papias quotes it. Hegesippus, as we have already observed, 
appears to refer to John in naming the door of Jesus. Athena- 
goras says (Suppl. 10): "But the Son of God is the Word 
of the Father in idea and energy. For of Him and by Him 
all things were made, the Father and the Son being one. And 
the Son being in the Father and Father in Son, in oneness and 
power of spirit, mind and Word of the Father, the Son of God, 
ji. i8» j n another passage he seems to paraphrase a verse in 
the seventeenth chapter (Suppl. 12): " And we are furthered 
on our way alone by knowing God and the Word with Him 
what the oneness of the Son with the Father is, what the com- 
munion of the Father with the Son is, what the spirit is, 1 7 3 - 21 ." 
Theophilus was the first one to mention this Gospel of John 
by name, the first one of the writers whose books have reached 
us. Tatian beginning his harmony of the Four Gospels with 
the beginning of John and the fragment of Muratori, with the 
attempt to explain the origin of the Gospel, close our series 
worthily. We have found that John was not at all less open 
to quotation because it did not give details of the life of Jesus 
in great masses. And nothing has pointed to an inclination 
to give this Gospel the go-by because it was written at a late 
date. The Christians who accepted this book so quickly are 
likely to have had good authority for their view that it was 
closely connected with the Apostle John. 



Acts. 

We now come to the book of Acts. It is a matter of course 
that it cannot have had for the early Christians the same value 
as the Gospels. The inclination to write and to read history as 
such was at the beginning of Christianity extremely small. The 
eyes of all were directed to the near future in which the world 
would close and the new, the heavenly life, would begin. Never- 
theless we know that this book was in the hands of the churches 
at an early date — we may ieave the date for the moment in- 
definite — and we find occasional references to it. Th^ letter to 



1 84 THE CANON 

Diognetus refers to it (ch. 3) : " For he that made the heaven 
and the earth and all things that are in them and supplies us 
with all things that we need, doth Himself lack none of the 
things which He supplies to those who think that they give [to 
Him], Acts i7 24 -25 # » Polycarp of Smyrna quotes Acts directly 
(ch. 1) : "Who endured for our sins up to meeting death, whom 
God raised up, loosing the bonds of Hades, Acts 2 24 ." Hermas 
appears to have Acts in view when he writes (Vis. 4. 2) : " Believ- 
ing that thou canst be saved by no one except by the great and 
celebrated name, Acts 4 12 ." The Exhortation to the Greeks 
which is associated with the works of Justin Martyr seems to 
have Acts in mind when it writes of Moses (ch. 10): "But he 
was also regarded worthy to share in all the education of the 
Egyptians, Acts 7 22 ." Hegesippus, whom we quoted, seems to 
refer to Acts when he speaks of James as being a true witness 
to both Jews and Greeks that Jesus is the Christ, Acts 20 21 . 
The letter of the churches of Vienne and Lyons refers to the 
story of Stephen the first martyr, Acts 6 8 -7 60 . And finally, the 
fragment of Muratori names the book regularly, while Irenaeus 
quotes and paraphrases many paragraphs from it. Irenaeus is a 
witness to the opening of a new time. We found that the early 
Christians did not lay great stress upon history. Irenaeus does, 
and therefore makes much of Acts. 



The Catholic Epistles. 

In approaching . the Catholic Epistles we come upon some- 
thing new, something that is very different from what we have 
thus far had before us. The Four Gospels and the book of Acts 
were large books. The Gospels claimed a special authority and 
value as accounts of the words and work of Jesus. The Acts 
seemed to busy themselves with the whole of rising Christianity, 
and were often supposed to include the acts of all the apostles, 
as, for example, the fragment of Muratori said. These five large 
books were not to be overlooked. If a church or a private man 
had bought one of them, he had had to pay well for it. The 
papyrus, or the parchment, and the work of writing these books 
had their equivalent in a round sum of money. The Catholic 
Epistles were on the contrary small books ; in a New Testament 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— CATHOLIC EPISTLES 1 85 

lying at hand the book of Acts, for example, takes about ninety 
four pages, and James, the longest of the Catholic Epistles, only 
about ten pages. Now, a little letter like that would, on the one 
hand, be easily copied off, so that if there had been a great 
demand for it it could have been easily distributed widely 
through the churches. But such a little letter could, on the 
other hand, without difficulty escape notice. The purchaser would 
not need to pay so very much for it, and would therefore in so 
far be less conscious of having it. It would the more readily 
pass out of his thoughts because it had cost him little. 

These letters could then, as short letters, have been easily and 
comparatively cheaply copied had people wanted them. Did 
many Christians wish for them ? At the first blush a modern 
Christian would say : Yes, they did wish for them. James was 
the first bishop of Jerusalem and the brother of Jesus, Peter was 
the great apostle, the leader of the twelve, John was the beloved 
disciple, and Jude was the brother of Jesus. On the face of it, 
that seems plausible. But we must try to get away from our 
conception of the value of these Epistles. We must ask what 
the Christians of that day probably thought of them. To begin 
with James and Jude, they were, it is true, brothers of Jesus, 
and if their letters were genuine they should have been treasured 
by the Church. Yet we must agree, in the first place, that we 
Know of no mission work on their part that impressed their 
names, their personalities, and their influence upon those circles 
of Christians to whom the greater part of the books of the New 
Testament were entrusted. They were doubtless active in some 
way, but we find no great signs of their activity in western and 
in Greek-speaking districts. And in the second place, the 
longer of the two, the letter of James, was addressed to the 
twelve tribes in the diaspora, and appeared therefore, however 
generally intended, to be particularly Jewish in its aim, while the 
two or three pages of Jude's letter, if really from Jude, Jude 
being named as a brother of James, were full of the Old 
Testament and of Jewish fables, and must therefore have 
appealed to the Jewish more than to the Greek Christians. 
These two letters were therefore not good candidates for a wide 
circulation among the Christians west of Palestine. 

First Peter claims for us consideration because of the name of 
the chief of the twelve. When, however, we go back to early 



I 86 THE CANON 

times we see at once that the whole trend of the greater numbei 
of Christians was towards Paul and not towards Peter. During 
the second century, as we have seen, "the Apostle" was. Paul. 
It did not occur to anyone that Peter was the great apostle. Paul 
was the great apostle. We must not forget that this trend towards 
Paul is not a splitting of the Church into Pauline and Petrine 
Christians. Far from it. The Christians who could be expected 
to be Petrine are almost without exception, and without having 
any thought of being peculiar, Pauline Christians. The greatest 
division in the early Church, that became for a while in a sense 
independent, was the split caused by Marcion, and that was 
in the other direction. That threw everything Jewish over- 
board. The upshot of this is, then, that a letter from Peter 
could in no wise offer a particular rivalry to the letters of Paul. 
And therefore this letter too was not likely to be so widely 
copied and read. Second Peter I do not regard as genuine, and 
I see no reason to suppose that it should have been known at 
this time. As for the Epistles of John, we have already observed 
that the first one was apparently closely attached to the Gospel, 
almost as if it were an appendix to it, so that it has a peculiarly 
good stand. I do not suppose that the Second and the Third 
Epistles emerged from the obscurity of private possession long 
before the point of time at which we now are, and if that 
supposition be just, it is not strange that they should not be 
quoted. Besides their private character, their limited size, their 
small contents made the possibility of quoting the less. They 
are in comparison not quoted very much to-day. 



James. 

The Epistle of James is perhaps the basis for Clement of 
Rome when he writes (ch. 10) : " Abraham, named *he friend, was 
found faithful in his becoming obedient to the words of God." 
This seems more likely to be taken from James 2 23 than from 
Isaiah 41 8 , or 2 Chronicles 20 7 . Hermas' Shepherd is simply 
full of James, full of the spirit, the thoughts, and the words of 
James. The ninth commandment begins : " He says to me : 
Take away from thyself doubt," and gives then a long develop- 
ment of James i 8 , which runs on with variations into the 



THE AGE OF IRENJttJS— JAMES, FIRST PETER 1 87 

following two commandments. The doubter and doubt are 
scourged in many passages as of the devil. In the eighth parable 
the shepherd says to Hermas (ch. 6) : " These are the apostates 
and betrayers of the Church, and who have blasphemed the Lord 
in their sins, and moreover also have been ashamed of the name 
of the Lord which was named upon them," referring to James 2 7 . 
He touches James 3 15 * 17 , putting faith in for wisdom (Mand. 9) : 
"Thou seest then, he says, that faith is from above from the 
Lord and has great power. But doubt is an earthly spirit from 
the devil, having no power." The rich who cheat their labourers 
are warned as in James 5 1 * (Vis. 3. 9) : "See to it then, ye that 
luxuriate in your wealth, lest those who are in want groan, and 
their groaning shall go up to the Lord, and ye shall be shut out 
with your good things outside of the door of the tower." In 
another place he draws from James 4 12 (Mand. 12. 6): "There- 
fore, hear ye me and fear Him that is able to do all things, to 
save and to destroy, and keep these commandments, and live to 
God." So far as we can judge of the Old Syrian translation it 
contained the Epistle of James. One would look for this Epistle 
in the East. 

First Peter. 

The First Epistle of Peter is referred to by Basilides. Clement 
of Alexandria tells us where (Strom. 4. 12, 81) : "And Basilides 
in the twenty-third book of his commentaries speaks about those 
who are punished as martyrs as follows in these very words : For 
I say this, that so many as fall under the so-called afflictions, 
whether having sinned by carelessness in other faults they are 
led to this good by the mildness of him who guides them, being 
really accused of other crimes by others, that they may not suffer 
as condemned for confessed wicked deeds, neither reviled as the 
adulterer nor the murderer, but as being Christians, which will 
comfort them so that they will not seem to suffer. And if any- 
one comes to suffer who has not sinned at all in the least, which 
is rare, not even this one shall be moved against the will of 
might, but shall be moved as also the infant suffered that seemed 
not to have sinned." That is 1 Peter 4 14 " 1G . The first part of 
the letter to Diognetus adds 1 Peter 3 18 to Romans (ch. 9) : " He 
gave His own Son a ransom for us, the holy one for the lawless 



1 88 THE CANON 

ones, the guileless one for the wicked ones, the just one for the 
unjust ones, the incorruptible one for the corruptible ones, the 
immortal one for the mortal ones." 

Polycarp in his letter to the Philippians touches here and 
there about ten verses of First Peter. He quotes i Peter i a 
most loosely (ch. i) : "In whom not seeing ye believe with joy 
unspeakable and glorified " — and continues with an allusion to 
i 12 , — " into which many desire to enter." A few words later i 13 
comes in : " Therefore girding up your loins serve God in fear 
and truth," — from which he passes to i 21 : — " Leaving the empty 
vain talk and the error of the many ; having believed on Him 
that raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and gave Him 
glory and a throne at His right hand." The following belongs 
to i Peter 2 11 (ch. 5) : " For it is good to be cut off from the 
desires in the world, for every desire wars against the spirit," 
even though 1 Peter has a different Greek word. Later we 
find 1 Peter 2 12 (ch. 10): "When ye can do good, do not 
put it off, for mercy frees from death. Be ye all subject 
to one another, having your conversation blameless before the 
heathen, so that from your good works also ye may receive 
praise and the Lord may not be blasphemed in you." He quotes 
1 Peter 2 24 - 22 of Jesus (ch. 8) : " Which is Christ Jesus who bore 
our sins in His own body on the tree. Who did no sin, nor 
was guile found in His mouth, but He endured all for us, that 
we may live in Him." Again he quotes and enlarges 1 Peter 
3 9 : " Not returning evil for evil, or reviling for reviling, or 
blow for blow, or curse for curse." And we find also 1 Peter 
4 7 (ch. 7) : " Let us return to the word that was handed down 
to us from the beginning, being sober unto prayers and holding out 
in fastings." That is a very abundant use of First Peter for 
Polycarp's short letter. 

Among the few fragments of Theodotus, of the Valentinian 
eastern school, that are preserved we have a quotation from 1 
Peter i 12 with Peter's name (Frag. 12) : " Into which angels desire 
to look, Peter says." Hermas alludes (Vis. 4. 3) to 1 Peter i 7 in 
describing the four colours on the head of the beast : " And the 
gold part are ye who flee from this world. For as the gold is 
proved by fire and becomes good for use, so also are ye proved 
who dwell in Him." Again (Vis. 4. 2) he quotes 1 Peter 5 7 , 
" Well didst thou escape, he says, because thou didst cast thy 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— FIRST JOHN 1 89 

care upon God and didst open thy heart to the Lord, and didst 
believe that thou couldst be saved by none except by the great 
and glorious name." Irenaeus quotes (1. 18. 3) from the Marcos^ 
ians a phrase that reminds us of First Peter : " They say that the 
arrangement of the ark in the flood, in which eight people were 
saved, most clearly pointed to the redeeming Eight." That 
looks like 1 Peter 3 20 ; it uses the same Greek word for 
" saved." As for Papias, Eusebius, in a passage already quoted, 
says that he uses proof passages from First Peter. It may be 
that Theophilus has 1 Peter i 18 in mind when he writes : 
"Believing in vain doctrines through the foolish error of an 
opinion handed down from their fathers." The allusion to 
First Peter is the more likely because Theophilus a few lines later 
in a list of sins uses two designations given in 1 Peter 4 3 , one 
of which only occurs there in such a list. We have already 
read above words from First Peter in the letter of the churches 
at Vienne and Lyons ; this Epistle had reached the far west. 
Irenaeus (4. 9. 2) quotes and names First Peter: "And Peter 
says in his Epistle : Whom not seeing, ye love, he says, in whom 
now not seeing ye have believed, ye will rejoice with joy un- 
speakable." That is 1 Peter i 8 . The sentence is curiously 
twisted. The word for unspeakable means rather "untellable." 
The Old Syriac translation appears to have contained First 
Peter. 

First John. 

When we turn to First John we must remember how much 
testimony we have already had for it as bound fast to the Gospel. 
The letter to Diognetus (ch. 10) refers to 1 John 4 19 : "Or how 
wilt thou love the one who thus loved you before ? " Polycarp 
(ch. 7) quotes, but freely, 1 John 4 2 - 3 , and perhaps 2 John 7 : 
" For every one who shall not confess that Jesus Christ is come 
in flesh, is antichrist. And whosoever does not confess the 
testimony of the cross, is of the devil." Possibly First John 
moved Valentinus (Hipp. 6. 29; p. 272 [185]) to write : "For 
he was entirely love. But love is not love, if there be not the 
thing loved." We have already seen that Justin Martyr and the 
Muratorian fragment knew this Epistle, and it appears to have 
formed part of the Old Syriac translation. 



190 THE CANON 



Second and Third John. 

The two smaller Epistles of John do not find a place at the 
first directly beside the Gospel and the First Epistle. They were 
doubtless treasured highly and preserved carefully in the family 
or families to some member of which they were originally sent. 
Finally, as time went on, the Christians began to have a little 
more thought for history, for archaeology, for personal reminders of 
the apostles. Then the owners of these two letters gave them to 
the Church in general, placed them in the circles over which they 
had any influence, or handed them over to the circles nearest to 
them. The clear reference to them in the fragment of Muratori 
gives us no distinct view of what the author of the work from which 
it was taken really thought about them. The text is at that point so 
corrupt that we can only guess at its possible meaning. We may, 
I think, say this about it. It is in the first place of importance 
that these letters are named at all at this early period. In the 
second place, it is of weight that they are not abruptly rejected as 
fictions or as not genuine. In the third place, the sense of the 
passage as originally written may have been to the effect that 
these letters were held in honour in the Catholic Church, meaning 
that they were regarded as being just as good, just as genuine as, 
even if much less important than, the First Epistle of John or the 
Epistles of Paul. In the fourth place, the mere fact of their not 
being mentioned at the same time with the First Epistle would 
seem to assign to them a lower value than to it, although the 
separation might be due alone to the contents. We might give 
this thought the turn, that the peculiar contents of the First 
Epistle may well have induced the otherwise unusual union of it 
with the Gospel, and thus its separation from the two other letters. 
And in the fifth place, the original sense of the uncorrupted 
sentence may have been, that these letters were not regarded as 
of equal worth with the other Epistles, but that they were recom- 
mended or perhaps only endured and allowed as writings that 
could be read for general information and comfort, but as void of 
all authority. In that I suppose these letters to have been mere 
private letters, this species of depreciation, if the sentence should 
some day be actually proved to have had this turn, would not be 
of any great importance. The two letters might seem to be the 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— 2. 3 JOHN, JUDE, PAUL 191 

dictation of one growing feeble and inclined to repeat phrases 
coined before by himself. 

Jude. 

The Epistle of Jude has a general address. Yet it must, as 
said above, if genuine, have appealed especially to Jewish 
Christians, and therefore have been less likely to be met with in 
other circles. Up to this time the only mention of it is found in 
the fragment of Muratori where it is joined to the Second and 
Third Epistles of John of which we have just spoken. What was 
said of them holds good for Jude, all but the reference to the 
private character of those two letters. 



The Epistles of Paul. 

When we turn our thoughts to the writings of Paul we have 
to keep in mind some general considerations. It is not uncommon 
to find people point to 2 Thessalonians 2 2 , where Paul says 
that the readers shall not let themselves be alarmed by a letter 
that may purport to be from him, but, as is suggested, is not from 
him at all, but from some one who is trying to deceive them by 
forging. It is not out of place, then, to ask at this point whether 
or not we should suppose that a large number of letters forged in 
the name of Paul were current in the early Church, and whether 
it be likely that any such letters have succeeded in winning a 
foothold among the Epistles which the Church assigns to Paul. 
If, as I assume, Second Thessalonians be genuine, it is of a 
comparatively early date among the Epistles of Paul, and if we 
should be forced to concede that from that time onward until the 
death of Paul, or even until still later, forgers, the same ones or 
others, had continued this nefarious work, there certainly would 
be room for a whole series of Epistles attached to Paul's name, 
but totally opposed to his person and to his spirit. 

Two reflections seem to me to make it altogether unlikely that 
such Epistles continued to be forged. On the one hand, the very 
reference to the frauds here made by Paul would have the tendency 
both to check the activity of the deceivers and to make it hard or 
useless for them to try to palm off their fabrications upon the 



192 THE CANON 

churches. And on the other hand, the long missionary work of 
Paul, his passage from city to city, at least as far as Rome, the large 
number not only of his acquaintances, but also of his intimate com- 
panions and helpers, who knew what he had written and what he 
had not written, and the large number of Epistles that he wrote, 
must have made it exceedingly difficult for forgers to start their 
fabrications upon a voyage of deceit throughout the Church 
and very hard to prevent anything, that they might perchance 
have succeeded in starting, from being detected, exposed, and 
denounced in a dozen places that had the most accurate infor- 
mation as to what he had written. Paul wrote so much that 
forgers would have had too limited a field for action. Paul's 
personal acquaintances were too numerous and too widely 
dispersed throughout the Church to leave any districts of import- 
ance unprotected from unscrupulous writers. It is therefore from 
the outset not likely that a number of spurious Epistles bearing 
the name of Paul were in the hands either of the great churches 
in the cities or of the smaller churches in the provinces and in 
remote districts. 

Romans. 

The Epistle to the Romans meets our eyes at the very 
beginning in the letter of Clement of Rome. Of course, Clement 
quotes freely, not from the roll before him but from memory. 
To the question, how we may come to find a place among those 
who await the Father and his gifts, he replies (ch. 35), among 
other things : " If we seek out what is well-pleasing and accept- 
able to him. If we accomplish the things that pertain to his 
blameless counsel and follow the way of the Truth, casting away 
from ourselves all iniquity and lawlessness, avarice, strifes, both 
evil habits and frauds, both backbitings and slanders, hatred of 
God, both pride and boasting, both vain glory and lack of 
hospitality. For those doing these things are hateful to God, and 
not only those doing them but also those who agree with them." 
That is Rom. 1 29 - 32 . And it was quoted thus at Rome about 
the year 95, and quoted to the Corinthians, the people living 
where Paul had been when he wrote Romans. The Ophites 
(Hipp. 5. 7; pp. 138, 140 [99, 100]) quote Rom. i 2 °- 23 and 26 - 27 . 
It is clear that they quote this long passage, from the roll before 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— ROMANS 1 93 

their eyes. They attribute the words to the Logos, the Word, 
and appear to say that Paul writes them. Basilides (Hipp. 7. 25 ; 
p. 368 [238]) quotes Rom. 8 19 - 22 , but turned about and mixed up. 
He says : " As it is written : And the creation itself groans (with 
us), and is in travail awaiting the revelation of the sons of God." 
In another place (7.27; p. 374 [241, 242]) he uses this very same 
passage, but still more freely. He says : " When then all sonship 
shall come and shall be above the boundary, that is the spirit, then 
the creation shall be treated mercifully. For it groans until now, 
and is tortured and awaits the revelation of the sons of God, so 
that all the men of the sonship may come up thence." Again 
(7* 2 5 > P- 37° C 2 3^> 2 39]) ne touches this passage in this shape, 
uniting to it Eph. i 21 : "Since then it was necessary, he says, 
that we the children of God should be revealed, about whom, 
he says, the creation groaned and travailed awaiting the revela- 
tion, and the Gospel came into the world and passed through 
all might and authority and lordship and every name that is 
named." In another place (7. 25 ; p. 370 [238]) he refers to 
Rom. 5 13, 14 from memory, and mixes the two verses together in 
the sentence : " Therefore until Moses from Adam reigned sin, 
as is written." That is enough for Basilides. 

The letter to Diognetus (ch. 9) bases a long paragraph on 
the two " times " of Paul, as, for example, in Rom. 3 21 - 2 6. 
In that paragraph it quotes Rom. 8 32 which I gave above 
in connection with 1 Pet. 3 18 , and refers as follows to the 
verses opening with Rom. 5 12 : " In order that the lawlessness 
of many should be hidden in one just one, and the righteousness 
of one should justify many lawless ones." Polycarp of Smyrna 
(ch. 6) quotes Rom. 14 10 * 12 : " For we are before the eyes of the 
Lord and God, and we must all stand before the judgment-seat 
of the Christ, and each one give account for himself." This is 
the constant loose quoting of those early days, which is after all 
so very much like the loose quoting that is often to be heard 
and to be read in these modern days. Valentinus (Hipp. 6. 35) 
quotes Rom. 8 11 : " This, he says, is that which is spoken : He 
that raised Christ from the dead will also make alive our mortal 
bodies or psychical [bodies]. For the earth came under a curse." 
Ptolemseus (Iren. 1. 8. 3) touches Rom. n 16 : "That the Saviour 
received the first-fruits of those whom He was about to save, 
[they say that] Paul said : And if the nrsi-fiuits are holy, so also 

13 



194 THE CANON 

is that which is leavened (or the baking)." He may have Rom. 
ii 36 in mind when he says (i. 3. 4) : "All things are unto Him 
and all things are from Him." 

Heracleon refers (Orig. on John, vol. 20. [38 30]) to Rom. 
13 4 : "The one seeking and judging is the one revenging me, 
the servant set for this purpose, who does not bear the sword in 
vain, the revenger (the attorney or the judge) of the king." He 
alludes (Orig. on John, vol. 13. 25) to Rom. 12 1 , and in so 
doing gives us an example of the way in which the second 
century calls Paul "the apostle": "as also the apostle teaches, 
saying that such piety (or service of God) is a reasonable service." 
Again he points to Rom. i 25 , when he blames (Orig. on John, 
vol. 13. 19) the former worshippers who worshipped in the flesh 
and in error the not-Father : " So that all those who worshipped 
the Demiurge alike went astray. And Heracleon charges that 
they served the creation and not the true creator, who is Christ." 
Theodotus (Fragm. 49) gives us in like manner Paul as " the 
apostle," and quotes Rom. 8 20 : " Therefore the apostle said : 
He was subject to the emptiness of the world, not willingly but 
because of Him that subjected Him, in hope, because He also 
will have been freed when the seed of God are gathered to- 
gether." He uses (Fragm. 56) also Rom. n 24 freely: "When 
then the psychical things are grafted in the good olive tree unto 
faith and incorruption, and partake of the fatness of the olive, 
and when the heathen shall enter in, then thus all Israel shall 
be saved." Again he writes down (Fragm. 67) Rom. 7 5 : 
"When we were in the flesh, says the apostle, as if already 
speaking outside of the body." 

The presbyter whom Irenaeus cites (4. 27. 2) alludes to 
Rom. 3 23 : " For all men are lacking in the glory of God, but 
they are justified not from themselves but from the coming of 
the Lord, those who await His light." And again (4. 27. 2) 
he quotes Rom. n 21 and 17 from memory curiously combined : 
" And that therefore Paul said : For if He did not spare the 
natural branches, lest He perchance also spare not thee, who 
though thou wast a wild olive, wast grafted into the fat of the 
olive and wast made a companion of its fatness." Justin Martyr 
(Dial. 47) refers to Rom. 2 4 : "For the mildness and the 
philanthropy of God and the unmeasuredness of His riches 
holds the one who repents from his sins, as Ezekiel says, for just 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— FIRST CORINTHIANS 195 

and sinless." Perhaps he has Rom. 12 6 half in mind when he 
(Dial. 40) writes of Christ as of a paschal lamb : " With whose 
blood according to the word (or the measure, perhaps) of their 
faith in Him they anoint their houses, that is to say them- 
selves, they who believe in Him." We have already seen that 
the churches in Vienne and Lyons knew this Epistle. And 
Theophilus of Antioch, writing to his friend Autolycus, gives 
(1. 14) a loose quotation of Rom. 2 6 * 9 , putting into the middle 
of it 1 Cor. 2 9 and 6 9 - 10 , evidently altogether from memory. It is 
a typical quotation : " Paying each one according to deserts the 
wages. To those who in patience through good works seek in- 
corruption He will give freely life everlasting, joy, peace, rest, 
and abundance of good things, which neither eye hath seen nor 
ear heard nor hath gone up into the heart of man. But to the 
unbelieving and despisers and those not obeying the truth, but 
obeying injustice since they are kneaded full of adulteries and 
fornications and sodomies and avarices and the forbidden 
idolatries, shall be wrath and anger, tribulation and straits. And 
at the end eternal fire shall take possession of them." 



First Corinthians. 

The First Epistle to the Corinthians had a rare testimony to 
its genuineness in the letter of Clement of Rome quoted above : 
"Take up the Epistle of the sainted Paul the apostle. What 
did he write to you first in the beginning of the Gospel ? " After 
that we could almost dispense with later witnesses. Simon 
Magus (Hipp. 6. 14 ; p. 244 [168]) uses 1 Cor. n 32 : "This," he 
says, " is that which is spoken : That we may not be condemned 
with the world." The Ophites (Hipp. 5. 8 ; p. 158 [112]) bring 
us 1 Cor. 2 13 - 14 : " These, they say, are the things that are called 
by all unspeakable mysteries : which [also we utter] not in 
learned words of human wisdom, but in [words] learned of spirit, 
judging spiritual things by spiritual, and the natural (psychical) 
man does not receive the things of the spirit of God, for they 
are foolishness to him. And these they say are the unspeak- 
able mysteries of the spirit, which we alone know." In another 
place (5. 8; p. 160 [113]) they play on the word for "ends" in 
1 Cor. io 11 , using it also in the sense of "customs": "For tax- 



196 THE CANON 

gatherers, they say, are those taking the customs of all things, 
and we, they say, are the tax-gatherers : Upon whom the customs 
(taxes, instead of ends) of the ages have fallen." And they go 
on to discuss the word. The Peratae quote (5. 12 ; p. 178 [125]) 
again 1 Cor. n 32 and call it Scripture : "And when the Scripture 
saith, they say : That we may not be condemned with the world, 
it mentions the third part of the special world." Basilides (6. 26 ; 
p. 372 [24a]) quotes also 1 Cor. 2 13 and calls it Scripture. 
Ignatius in writing to the Ephesians (ch. 18) refers to 1 Cor. i 20 : 
" Where is a wise man ? Where is one making researches ? 
Where is the boasting of those called intelligent ? " 

The letter to Diognetus (ch. 5) points to 1 Cor. 4 10 - 12 when it 
says of the Christians : " They are dishonoured and glory in the 
dishonourings. They are blasphemed and are justified. They 
are reviled and they bless. They are insulted and do honour." 
Polycarp, writing to the Philippians, names Paul (ch. 11) and 
quotes 1 Cor. 6 2 : "Or do we not know that the saints shall 
judge the world, as Paul teaches." Again (ch. 5) he quotes 
1 Cor. 6 9 - 10 : "And neither whores nor effeminate men nor 
sodomites shall inherit the kingdom of God, nor those doing 
unseemly things." 

Valentinus gives us 1 Cor. 2 14 again (6. 34 ; p. 284 [193, 194]) : 
"Therefore," he says, "the natural man does not receive the 
things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, And 
foolishness, he says, is the power of the Demiurge, for he was 
foolish and without understanding, and thought he was working 
out the world, being ignorant that Wisdom, the mother, the 
Eight, works all things in him for the creation of the world 
without his knowing it." The Valentinians (Iren. 1. 3. 5) quote 
1 Cor. i 18 : "And they say that Paul the apostle himself refers 
to this very cross " — they insisting upon it that the fan for 
purging the threshing-floor was the cross — " thus : For the word 
of the cross is to those who perish, foolishness, but to those 
who are saved, the power of God." They bring forward (1. 8. 2) 
also 1 Cor. 15 8 with n 10 in this way: "And they say that Paul 
sp )ke in the [Epistle] to the Corinthians : And last of all as to 
the untimely born, he was seen also by me. And that he in the 
same Epistle manifested the appearance to the Achamoth with 
the contemporaries of the Saviour, saying : It is necessary that 
the woman have a veil on her head because of the angels. 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— FIRST CORINTHIANS 1 97 

And that when the Saviour came to her, the Achamoth put on 
a veil for modesty's sake." Again (1. 8. 3) they combine 1 Cor. 
15 48 and 2 14 - 15 : "And [they say] that Paul, moreover, spoke 
clearly of earthly men, natural men, and spiritual men. In one 
place : Such as the earthly one is, so also are the earthly ones. 
And in another place : And the natural (psychical) man does 
not receive the things of the spirit. And in another place : 
The spiritual man judgeth all things. And they say that the 
phrase : The natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit, 
is spoken of the Demiurge, who being psychical did not know 
either the mother who is spiritual, or her seed, or the sons in 
the pleroma." 

Heracleon (Orig. on John, vol. 13. 59 [58]) seems to refer 
to 1 Cor. 2 8 when he speaks of: "The kingly one of the rulers 
of this age." He gives 1 Cor. i5 53 - 54 thus (13. 60 [59]) : "And 
Heracleon does not regard the soul as immortal, but as having 
need of salvation, saying that it is the soul which is meant in 
the words : Corruption putting on (clothed in) incorruption and 
mortality putting on immortality, when its death is swallowed up 
in victory." 

Theodotus, speaking of " the apostle," which, of course, is 
Paul — a few lines farther he calls Peter, Peter — quotes (Fragm. 
11) from him 1 Cor. 1 5 40 in this enlarged way : " Another glory of 
the heavenly ones, another of the earthly ones, another of the 
angels, another of the archangels." Then a little later (Fragm. 14) 
he turns to 1 Cor. 15 44 : "Therefore the apostle: For it is sown 
a natural (psychical) body, but is raised a spiritual body." And 
again (Fragm. 15) he gives us 1 Cor. 15 49 and 13 12 : "And as we 
bore the image of the earthly, so also shall we bear the image 
of the heavenly, of the spiritual, being perfected by degrees. But 
he says image again, as if there were spiritual bodies. And 
again : Now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then 
face to face." In another passage ( Fragm." 22) he quotes 1 Cor. 
15 29 : "And when the apostle says: 'Since what will those do 
who are baptized for the dead ? ' For in our behalf, he says, the 
angels were baptized, of whom we are parts." This he discusses 
at length. Like the Valentinians, he also (Fragm. 44) gives us 
1 Cor. 11 10 . The passage is thoroughly Oriental. Wisdom sees 
Jesus Christ, runs with joy to meet Him, and worships Him : 
"But beholding the male angels sent out with Him, she was 



198 THE CANON 

ashamed and put on a veil. Because of the mystery Paul com- 
mands the women : To wear power on the head because of the 
angels." How absurd that the great Wisdom should be repre- 
sented as feeling the Eastern feminine reluctance to be seen, 
to have her face seen, by male persons, yes, by male angels. 
Another remarkable passage (Fragm. 80), the last from Theo- 
dotus, I must give in full, for it reaches from Nicodemus to Paul : 
" He whom the mother bears to death is lead also to the world, 
but whom Christ bears again to life is changed off to the Eight. 
And they will die to the world, but live to God, so that death 
may be loosed by death, and the corruption shall rise again. 
For he who has been sealed by Father and Son and Holy Spirit 
cannot be seized by any other power, and is changed by three 
names of all the Trinity (?) in corruption. Having borne the 
image of the earthly, it then bears the image of the heavenly," 
1 Cor. 15 49 . Of course that means that the corruption rises in 
incorruption, and is changed from corruption to incorruption. 

Hermas (Sim. 5. 7) seems to have 1 Cor. 3 16 - 17 in mind 
when he writes that the shepherd says to him : " Hear now ; 
keep thy flesh pure and unspotted, in order that the spirit 
dwelling in it may bear witness to it, and thy flesh may be 
justified. ... If thou soilest thy flesh, thou wilt soil also the 
Holy Spirit. And if thou soil the spirit, thou shalt not live." 
Justin appears (Apol. 60) to allude to 1 Cor. 2 4,5 in saying 
that the Christians were largely humble, unlearned men, and 
adding: "So that it may be understood that these things 
did not take place by human wisdom but were said by the 
power of God." It would be possible that Justin (Dial. 38) 
thought of 1 Cor. i ]9 - 24 } or 2 7 - 8 when he wrote: "I know that 
the Word of God said : This great wisdom of the Maker of all 
and the all powerful God is concealed from you." He quotes 
(Dial, in) plainly 1 Cor. 5 7 : "For the passover was the Christ, 
who was sacrificed afterwards." Perhaps we may see 1 Cor. 5 s 
in his words (Dial. 14): " For this is the sign of the unleavened 
bread, that ye do not do the old works of the evil leaven." 
Justin (Dial. 35) puts in, as if they were words of Jesus, the 
phrase : " For He said : There will be schisms and heresies." 
But it is not impossible that the words are in momentary forget- 
fulness assigned to Jesus, and that they really are the reproduc- 
tion of the impression made by 1 Cor. n 18 - 19 . When Justin 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— FIRST CORINTHIANS 199 

(Dial. 41) speaks of the Lord's Supper his phrase recalls 1 Cor. 
n 23 - 24 . He says that the offering of flour for the one who had 
been cleansed from leprosy : " Was a type of the bread of the 
eucharist, which Jesus Christ our Lord handed down to us to 
do in remembrance of the passion, which He suffered for the 
men who were cleansed as to their souls from all wickedness." 
At another place (Dial. 70) he alludes to the same passage as 
follows : " It is clear that in this prophecy " — from Isaiah — 
[reference is made] "to the bread which our Christ commanded 
us to do in memory of His having been made body for the sake 
of those who believe on Him, for whom also He became a 
suffering one, and to the cup which He commanded us to do, 
giving thanks, in memory of His blood. 5 ' Finally, Justin seems 
to be thinking of 1 Cor. 12 12 when he writes (Dial. 42) : "Which 
is what we can see in the body. The whole of the many 
numbered members are called and are one body. For also a 
community and a church being many men as to number are 
called in the one calling and are addressed as being one 
thing." 

The essay on the Resurrection, whether from Justin Martyr 
or not, refers (ch. 10) naturally to 1 Cor. 15 42 or *° or 53 and 54 . 
It is an interesting passage which proceeds from the thought 
that Jesus, if He had only preached the life of the soul, would 
have done no more than Pythagoras and Plato : " But now He 
came preaching the new and strange hope to men. For it was 
strange and new that God should promise, not to keep incorrup- 
tion in incorruption, but to make corruption incorruption." The 
Exhortation to the Greeks turns in its freedom 1 Cor. 4 20 
thus (ch. 35) : " For the operations of our piety are not in words 
but in works." Instead of operations of piety we might say 
simply : our religion. 

Tatian is not content with 1 Cor. 7 5 . Clement of Alexandria 
(Strom. 3. 12. 85) tells us about it : "Therefore he writes word 
for word in what he says about the state of mind according to 
the Saviour : Symphony therefore fits well with prayer, but the 
communion of corruption" — by which he means the marriage 
bed — " destroys the supplication. And then he forbids it in a 
repelling way through the agreement. For again he declared 
that agreements to the coming together were because of Satan 
and of a lack of temperance, about to persuade to serve two 



200 THE CANON 

masters, through symphony God and through not symphony 
intemperance and whoredom and devil. And this he says 
explaining the apostle, and he treats the truth sophistically, 
building up a lie by means of a true thing." In another place 
(3. 23. 8) Irenaeus tells us that Tatian used 1 Cor. 15 22 : "Since 
in Adam we all die." The fragment of Muratori places the 
letters to the Corinthians at the head of the list of Paul's 
letters, or names the Corinthian church as the first of the seven 
churches to which Paul wrote. We know, however, that the 
apostle wrote to the Thessalonian church first, and that from 
Corinth where he was founding a new church. Athenagoras in 
his essay on the Resurrection (ch. 18) quotes 1 Cor. 15 53 : "What 
remains is clear to every one, that it is necessary according to 
the apostle that this corruptible and fleeting should be clothed 
in incorruption." He used a less common Greek word in 
substituting in his memory fleeting for mortal. 

Theophilus in writing to his heathen friend Autolycus (2. 1) 
gives us a touch of 1 Cor. i 18 or 21 or especially 23 , and a living 
proof of it. He says : " Thou knowest and rememberest that 
thou didst suppose that our word " — that is here as much as : 
our religion — "was foolishness." He uses the same passage later 
of heathen who look down upon Christians. He may have 
1 Cor. 2 7 - 8 - 10 in mind in writing (2. ^^) : "That shows that all 
the rest have gone astray, and that only we Christians have given 
place to the truth, who are taught by Holy Spirit that spoke in 
the prophets and announced all things beforehand." At another 
place (3. 2) Theophilus appears to have 1 Cor. g 2G in mind. He 
writes: "For in a certain way those who write what is not clear 
beat the air." The word he uses for not clear is the one that 
Paul uses for the manner of his running in the preceding phrase. 
Again (1. 13) he alludes to 1 Cor. 12 11 : "All these things 
worketh the wisdom of God." So also (1. 13) he quoted 1 Cor. 
j cj36. 37 . « jr or if, for example, perchance a grain of corn or of the 
other seeds should be cast into the ground, first it dies and is dis- 
solved, then it rises and becomes an ear." He brings 1 Cor. 
15 50 as the close of the following sentence (2. 27): "For God 
gave us a law and holy commandments, which every one who 
doeth can be saved and obtaining the resurrection inherit in- 
corruption." And he also cites 1 Cor. i^- 5i briefly (1. 7): 
"When he shall put off that which is mortal and put on im- 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— 2 CORINTHIANS, GALATIANS 201 

mortality, then he shall see God according to his deserts." This 
collection of quotations from First Corinthians made by 
Theophilus shows us that, in spite of all his need of using the 
Old Testament, he knows well and knows how to apply the New 
Testament books. 

Second Corinthians. 

When we turn to Second Corinthians we need not look for 
such a free and full use of it as of the First Epistle. It did not 
contain so much that was striking. I question very much 
whether it is read so often to-day as the First Epistle. So far 
as I can judge it is less frequently made the object of university 
lectures. The Ophites say (5. 8 ; p. 158 [112]) in the words of 
2 Cor. 12 2 - 4 : "This gate Paul the apostle knows, opening it in 
a mystery and saying : That he was snatched by an angel and 
came as far as the second and third heaven, to paradise itself, 
and saw what he saw, and heard words unspeakable, which it 
is not permitted to man to speak." Basilides quotes ver. 4 at 
another place (7. 26; p. 374 [241]) in direct words: "I heard 
unspeakable words which it is not permitted to man to speak." 
The letter to Diognetus (ch. 5) touches 2 Cor. io 3 : "Being in 
flesh, but not living according to flesh." And again (ch. 5) 
the first part of 2 Cor. 6 10 comes in : " Being punished they 
rejoice as being made alive," and just before it the second part : 
" They are poor and make many rich. They want many things 
and abound in all things." Polycarp approaches 2 Cor. 4 14 
when he writes to the Philippians (ch. 2): "And He that raised 
Him from the dead will also raise us if we do His will and walk 
in His commandments and love what He loved." In another 
place (ch. 6) he combines 2 Cor. 5 10 with Rom. i4 10 - 12 , just as 
other writers did, and puts Christ instead of God as judge : " And 
we must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, and each 
one give account for himself." That is a very natural change. 



Galatians. 

The Epistle to the Galatians is quoted by the Ophites. 
They say (5. 7; p. 138 [99]) of their Attis after Gal. 3 28 and 6 15 ; 



202 THE CANON 

11 He has gone over to the eternal nature above, where, they say, 
there is neither female nor male, but a new creation, a new man, 
who is male and female." At another place Adamas is named 
as male and female. Explaining a passage of the Psalms they 
say (5. 7 ; p. 148 [106]) : "That is from the confusion below to 
the Jerusalem above which is the mother of the living," as in 
Gal. 4 26 , which reads : our mother. Justin the Gnostic (Hipp. 
5. 26 ; p. 226 [155]) reproduces Gal. 5 17 , but puts the soul, the 
psyche, instead of the flesh : " For this reason the soul is drawn 
up against the spirit and the spirit against the soul." Polycarp, 
just after mentioning Paul and his letters to the Philippians, 
calls faith (ch. 3), in the words of Gal. 4 26 about Jerusalem, 
our mother : " Which is the mother of us all." And in the 
words of Gal. 6 7 he writes (ch. 5) : " Knowing that God is not 
mocked, we should walk worthily of His commandment and 
glory." Theodotus writes (Fragm. 53) from Gal. 3 19 : "And 
Adam had unknown to himself the spiritual seed sown into 
his soul by Wisdom, ordered by angels in the hands of a 
mediator. And the mediator is not of one, but God is one." 
In another place (Fragm. 76) he touches Gal. 3 27 : "For he 
that is baptized into God is taken up into God." It is a vague 
remembrance of Galatians that shapes his phrase. 

The Oration to the Greeks, possibly Justin Martyr's, gives 
us Gal. 4 12 in a call of Christ's (ch. 5): "Come! Learn! 
Become as I am, for I also was as ye are." And a few lines 
farther on he takes up Gal. 5 20 - 21 in passing : " Thus the Logos 
drives away from the very corners of the soul the frightful 
things of sense, first desire, by means of which every frightful 
thing is born, enmities, strifes, anger, contending passions, and 
the things like these." In two passages (chs. 95, 96) in his Dialogue 
with Trypho, Justin Martyr quotes Deuteronomy in a form that 
is not like the text of the Septuagint, but is just like the form 
of the same passages given in Gal. 3 10 and 13 . It is not 
absolutely impossible that both Justin and Paul quoted from 
some third source, some collection of Old Testament passages, 
which gave the verses in the shape found. We know, however, 
nothing of such an anthology, and it is therefore the only proper 
thing to suppose that Justin quoted the passages from Galatians, 
or rather quoted the passages in the words which Galatians 
had impressed on his memory. Athenagoras (Suppl. 16) uses 



THE AGE OF IREN.EUS— EPHESIANS 203 

words from Gal. 4 9 , when, having stated the view of the Peri- 
patetics that the world was God's substance and body, he 
writes : " We fall away to the poor and weak elements." 



Ephesians. 

The Epistle to the Ephesians i 4 doubtless moved Clement 
of Rome to write (ch. 64) : " Who chose our Lord Jesus Christ 
and through Him us to be a special people." In another place 
(ch. 32) he has in mind Eph. 2 8 and i 5 : " Therefore they all have 
been glorified and enlarged not through themselves, or their works, 
or the righteous deeds that they have done, but through His will." 
Again (ch. 46) he brings in Eph. 4 4 " 6 : " Or have we not one God 
and one Christ and one spirit of grace poured out upon us and 
one calling in Christ ? " Probably he thought of or was guided 
by Eph. 4 18 in referring to the darkened understanding (ch. 36) : 
"Through this One (Christ) our foolish and darkened mind 
flowers up into His wonderful light." The following passage 
(ch. 49) reminds us of Eph. 5 2 : " In love the Master took us up. 
Because of the love that He had towards us Jesus Christ our 
Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God, and His flesh 
for our flesh and His soul for our souls." In two places (ch. 2 
and 38) he returns to Eph. 5 27 : " Ye were all humble-minded, 
boasting not at all, subjected [to others] rather than subjecting," 
and : " Let our whole body be saved in Christ Jesus, and let 
each one be subjected to his neighbour as also he was set in 
his grace." The Ophites quote Eph. 3 15 turned about (5. 7 ; 
p. 136 [97]): "In order that the Great Man above may be 
perfectly set in His might : From whom, as they say, every 
fatherhood is constituted on earth and in the heavens." As 
to the resurrection they say (5. 7 ; p. 146 [104]) with Eph. 5 14 : 
" Rise thou that sleepest and stand up, and Christ will enlighten 
thee." 

Basilides uses Eph. i 21 when he writes (5. 20; p. 356 [230]): 
" For also that which is not unspeakable is not named unspeak- 
able, but is, he says, above every name that is named." He 
speaks also (7. 26; p. 374 [241]) of: "The mystery which was 
not made known to the former generations, as it is written, he 
says : According to revelation the mystery was made known to 



204 THE CANON 

me." That points to Eph. 3 3 and 5 . It is not out of place to 
recall again here Ignatius' exaggeration, in which in writing 
to the Ephesians he declares that they were people who had 
been as initiated into the mysteries, companions of Paul : " Who 
makes mention of you in Christ Jesus in every Epistle." The 
letter to Diognetus (ch. 2) takes up the thought and in part the 
words of Eph. 4 21 ' 24 : " Come now, cleansing thyself from all 
the considerations that held thy mind fast before, and putting 
off the habit of mind which deceived thee and becoming as 
from the beginning a new man, as also of a new way of thought, 
as thou indeed thyself hast confessed, thou wilt be a hearer." 
Polycarp writes (ch. 12) : "Only as is spoken in the Scriptures : 
Be angry and sin not, and, let not the sun go down upon your 
wrath," adding to the psalm Eph. 4 26 . Barnabas (ch. 6) seems 
to refer to Eph. 3 17 and 2 22 in writing : " For He was about 
to appear in the flesh and to dwell in you. For my brethren 
the dwelling of your heart is a temple holy to the Lord." The 
Valentinians (6. 35 ; p. 284 [194]) quote Eph. 3 9 - 10 . "And the 
apostle : The mystery which was not made known to the former 
generations." Again (6. 34; p. 284 [193]) they quote Eph. 314-16-18 ; 
"This is, they say, that which is written in the Scripture: For 
the sake of this I bend my knees to God, and the Father and 
the Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ, in order that God may 
give you that Christ may dwell in your inward man, that is 
the psychical not the bodily, that ye may be able to know what 
is the depth, which is the Father of all things, and what is the 
breadth, which is the Cross, the boundary of the pleroma, or 
what is the length, that is the pleroma of the ages." 

Theodotus (Fragm. 1 9) quotes Paul by name for Eph. 4 24 : 
" And Paul : Put on the new man the one created according to 
God." Again he writes (Fragm. 43) : " The Saviour himself 
ascending and descending, and that he ascended, what is it but 
that he also descended? He himself is the one going down 
into the lowest parts of the earth and going up above the 
heavens." That is Eph. 4 9 - 10 . He quotes also (Fragm. 85) 
Eph. 6 16 : "Therefore it is necessary to be armed with the 
weapons of the Lord, having the body and the soul invulnerable 
with arms able to quench the darts of the devil, as the apostle 
says." Finally, we have from him (Fragm. 48) Eph. 4 30 : 
"Wherefore also the apostle saith : And grieve ye not the 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— PHILIPPIANS 205 

Holy Spirit of God in which ye have been sealed." Hermas 
(Sim. 9. 13) used Eph. 4 4 : "Thus also those who believed on 
the Lord through His Son and are clothed in these spirits shall 
be unto one Spirit and unto one body and one colour of their 
garments." In another place (Mand. 3) he touches apparently 
Eph. 4 30 : " For thou must needs as a servant of God walk 
in truth and not cause an evil conscience to dwell with the 
spirit of truth, nor bring grief upon the sacred and true spirit." 
Theophilus (1. 6), speaking of the Pleiades and Orion and of the 
rest of the stars : " In the circle of the heavens, all of which 
the much varied wisdom of God called by their own names," 
refers to the wisdom mentioned Eph. 3 10 . This he again 
alludes to (2. 16): "And on the fifth day the living creatures 
came forth from the waters, by which also in these the manifold 
wisdom of God is displayed." He seems to use Eph. 4 18 when 
he writes : " And this befell thee because of the blindness of 
thy soul and the hardness of thy heart." 



Philippians. 

As for the Epistle to the Philippians, the Sethians (5. 19; 
p. 206 [143]) quote Phil. 2 1 saying: "This of the beast is the 
form of the servant, and this is the necessity for the Son of God 
to come down into the womb of the virgin." The letter to 
Diognetus (ch. 5) refers to our citizenship as in Phil. 318-20; 
"They spend their time on earth, but they are citizens in 
heaven." Polycarp in writing to the Philippians says (ch. 3) : 
" For neither I nor another like me can follow up the wisdom 
of the blessed and glorified Paul, who being among you in 
person before the men of that day taught accurately and 
most certainly the word about truth, who also, when far from 
you, wrote Epistles to you, into which if ye look, ye shall be 
able to be built up in the faith given to you." That sentence 
is not only of interest as a testimony to the existence of at 
least one letter of Paul's to the Philippians. It tells us in so 
many words something that plain common sense must have 
told us long ago. We know that the Philippians were allowed 
by Paul to send him money for his personal support, and that 
they sent money to him repeatedly and even while he was at 



206 THE CANON 

Rome. Now no one could dream that Paul did not repeatedly 
write to them to say that he had received their gifts, and to thank 
them for these gifts. And here Polycarp tells us that Paul wrote 
letters, not merely one letter, to them. The people who think 
that our Epistle to the Philippians really consists of two or more 
such letters combined into one have not yet convinced me that 
they are right in this view. It is likely that the said letters were 
short and chiefly personal, we might almost say chiefly occupied 
with the business side of the matter, and that therefore they were 
not saved for the general use of the Church. Again Polycarp 
(ch. n) refers to the one letter of Paul to the Philippians, in 
reproving a presbyter who had gone astray : " And I perceived 
no such thing among you, nor heard of it, among whom the 
blessed Paul laboured, who are in the beginning of his Epistle. 
For he boasts of you among all the Churches, which alone then 
knew God, and we did not yet know [him]." 

Theodotus (Fragm. 19) quotes Phil. 2 1 : "Whence also he is 
said to take the form of a servant, not only the flesh according 
to his coming, but also the nature from the being subject, and 
the nature of the servant as able to suffer and subject to 
the powerful and lordly cause." Again (Fragm. 35) he alluded 
apparently to the same verse : " Jesus our light, as the apostle 
says, having emptied Himself," that is according to Theodotus 
coming to be outside of His boundary, "since He was an angel." 
The essay on the Resurrection, attached to Justin Martyr's works, 
quotes (ch. 7) Phil. 3 20 : " We must next oppose those who 
dishonour the flesh, and say that it is not worthy of the 
resurrection or of the heavenly citizenship." It gives it a second 
time a little later thus (ch. 9) : " As it was spoken : Our dwelling 
is in heaven." Theophilus (1. 2) uses the phrase : "Proving the 
things which are different" which occurs both in Rom. 2 18 
and Phil. i 10 . He speaks in another passage (2. 17) in the words 
of Phil. 3 19 : " Of some men who do not know or worship God, 
and who think earthly things and do not repent." He is 
evidently thinking by means of Phil. 4 8 when he writes (2. 36) : 
"Because then these things are true and useful and just and 
agreeable to all men, it is clear also that those doing ill shall 
of necessity be punished according to the measure of their 
deeds." 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— COLOSSIANS 207 



COLOSSIANS. 

For the Epistle to the Colossians we have first to point 
to the Peratae, who quote Col. 2 9 and say (5. 12 ; p. 178 [124]) : 
"This is what is spoken: All the fulness" — the pleroma — 
"pleased to dwell in him bodily, and all the Godhead of the 
thus divided Trinity (?) is in Him." Basilides seems to touch 
Col. 2 3 and i 26 * 27 , perhaps with Eph. 3 5 , when he writes (7. 25 ; 
p. 370 [238]): "This is the mystery which was not known to 
the former generations, but he was in those times king and lord, 
as it seems of all, the great prince, the Eight." Theodotus 
(Fragm. 19) gives us Col. i 15 : "And still more clearly and 
exactly in another place he [Paul] says: Who is the image of 
the invisible God, then he adds : " Firstborn of all creation," 
and he proceeds to discuss the passage. In another passage 
(Fragm. 43) he brings Col. i 16 - 17 thus: "And becomes head 
of all things with the Father. For all things were created in 
him, seen and unseen, thrones, lordships, kingships, godheads, 
services." 

Justin cites Col. i 15 apparently (Dial. 84): "That is that 
through the virgin womb the first begotten of all creations having 
been made flesh became truly a child." In another place (Dial. 
85) he gives the title better : " For according to His name, this 
Son of God and firstborn of all creation." Again (Dial. 125) 
he gives it : " Child firstborn of all creatures," using altogether 
different Greek words. But there is no question about it that he 
has this passage in his mind. And still again (Dial. 138) he 
writes : " For Christ being firstborn of all creation, became also 
a beginning again of another race, the one born again by Him 
through water and faith and wood, which has the mystery of 
the cross." And once more (Dial. 100) he says of Jesus: 
"Therefore He revealed to us all things as many as we have 
understood from the Scriptures by His grace, we knowing that 
He is firstborn of God and before all creatures, and son of the 
patriarchs, since He was made flesh through the virgin from their 
race." He seems to have had Col. 2 11 - 12 in mind when he wrote 
(Dial. 43) of our receiving the spiritual circumcision: "And we 
received it through baptism on account of the mercy which is 
from God, since we had become sinners, and it is permitted to 



208 THE CANON 

all to receive [it] likewise." It may be that we should see in the 
Exhortation to the Greeks (ch. 15) an allusion to Col. i 16 in 
a discussion of an Orphic verse : " He names voice there the 
Word of God by whom were made heaven and earth and the 
whole creation, as the divine prophecies of the holy men teach 
us, which he also in part having perceived in Egypt, knew that 
all creation took place by the Word of God." 

Theophilus also (2. 22), like Justin Martyr, quotes Col. i 15 : 
"And when God wished to make what He had determined upon, 
He begot this forth-proceeding Word, a firstborn of all creation, 
not that He was emptied of His Word, but that He begot a 
Word and converses ever with the Word." Speaking of the just 
(2. 17) he uses Col. 3 2 : "Like birds they fly upward in their 
soul, thinking the things which are above and being well-pleasing 
to the will of God." 



First and Second Thessalonians. 

First Thessalonians comes to view in Ignatius' letter (ch. 10) 
to the Ephesians, where he touches 1 Thess. 5 17 : "And for the 
rest of men pray without ceasing." Polycarp brings the thought 
of 1 Thess. 5 17 in writing to the Philippians (ch. 4) when he says of 
the widows that they : " Should intercede without ceasing for all." 
We gave above Dionysius of Corinth's words to the Church at 
Rome in which he reverted to the thought of 1 Thess. 2 11 , 
comforting the distressed as a father his children. Polycarp 
quotes directly Second Thessalonians in speaking (ch. 11) of 
the erring presbyter Valentus and his wife. He writes : " Be ye 
therefore also moderate (sober) in this matter, and do not regard 
such people as enemies, but call them back as suffering and erring 
members, so that ye may save your whole body," see 2 Thess. 3 15 . 
Justin Martyr (Dial, no) applies 2 Thess. 2 3,4 : "Two of His 
comings are announced : the one, in which He is preached as 
suffering and without glory and dishonoured and crucified ; and 
the second, in w r hich He will come with glory from the heavens, 
when also the man of the apostasy, who also speaks lofty things 
to the Most High, will dare upon the earth lawless deeds against 
us the Christians." 



THE AGE OF IREN.EUS— THESS., HEBREWS 209 



Hebrews. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews is the book of the New Testament 
that comes before our eyes in such abundance in that first great 
letter of the generation following upon the time of the apostles, 
in Clement of Rome. Quoting Heb. i 3 , Clement writes (ch. 36) : 
"Through this one" — Christ — "the Master wished that we 
should taste of the undying wisdom, who being the reflection of 
His greatness, is so much greater than the angels, as He inherited 
a more excellent name [than they]." Yet the quotation is a very 
free one. We know that nothing else is to be looked for. Im- 
mediately afterwards he gives the Old Testament quotations found 
in Heb. i 5 and 7 and 13 , and we must presuppose that he takes 
them from that Epistle and not directly from the given psalms. 
See how freely Clement (ch. 17) quotes Heb. n 37 : "Let us 
become imitators also of those who walked about in goatskins 
and sheepskins heralding the coming of Christ." Hermas (Vis. 
2. 3) touches Heb. 3 12 : " But the not departing from the living 
God saves thee, and thy simplicity and much temperance." 

Justin Martyr shows that he knows this Epistle, and that 3 1 , 
by the way in which he in his Apology calls Jesus an apostle, 
for He is only called so in that verse. In one passage (ch. 12) 
Justin writes : " For He foretold that all these things should 
come to pass, I say, being our teacher and the son and apostle 
of the Father of all and ruler God, Jesus Christ, from whom also 
we have our being named Christians." In another passage 
(ch. 63) he says : " And the Word of God is His Son, as we 
said before. And He is called angel and apostle. For He 
Himself announces whatever needs be known, and is sent pro- 
claiming whatever is declared, as also our Lord Himself said : 
He that heareth Me heareth Him that sent Me." Theophilus 
(2. 25) refers to Heb. 5 12 , which we saw that Pinytus the bishop 
of Cnossus on Crete used in writing to the Bishop Dionysius of 
Corinth. Theophilus says : " For also now when a child has 
been born it cannot at once eat bread, but is brought up at first 
on milk, then with advancing years it comes also to solid food." 
He applies that then to Adam. Only a few lines farther on he 
gives us Heb. 12 9 : "And if it be necessary that children be sub- 
ject to their parents, how much more to the God and Father of all." 
14 



2IO THE CANON 



First and Second Timothy. 

Clement of Rome knows First Timothy. He touches i Tim. 
2 s and 5 4 in writing (ch. 7) : "And let us see what is good and 
what is pleasing and what is acceptable before Him that made 
us." Polycarp (ch. 4) quotes 1 Tim. 6 10 and 7 : " And the 
beginning of all ills is the love of money. Knowing then that 
we brought nothing into the world, but neither have we any- 
thing to take out [of it]." But we see how freely he quotes from 
memory. We could imagine that Basilides (7. 22 ; p. 360 [232]) 
was guided in his words : " Increasing them by addition, espe- 
cially at the necessary times," by 1 Tim. 2 6 , since, although he says 
" necessary times," he uses for " especially " the word attached by 
Paul to " times." The letter to Diognetus (ch. 4) reminds us of 
1 Tim. 3 16 : " Do not think that you can learn from men the 
mystery of their especial godliness." Barnabas quotes (ch. 12) 
from the same verse : " Behold again Jesus, not a son of man 
but a son of God, and by a type revealed in flesh." The essay 
on the Resurrection (ch. 8) touches 1 Tim. 2 4 : " Or do they think 
that God is envious? But He is good, and wishes all to be 
saved." Athenagoras closes his apology (ch. 37) to Marcus 
Aurelius and Commodus most fitly by quoting 1 Tim. 2 2 : "And 
this is what suits us, that we may pass a calm and quiet life, 
and we ourselves will obey eagerly all that is commanded." In 
another place (ch. 16) he uses two words from 1 Tim. 6 16 : "For 
God Himself is all things to Himself, light unapproachable, a 
perfect world, spirit, power, word." We saw above that Theo- 
philus quoted 1 Tim. 2 2 . Barnabas quotes (ch. 7)2 Tim. 4 1 : 
"The Son of God being Lord, and going to judge living and 
dead." Heracleon (CI. Al. Strom. 4. 9. 72) quotes 2 Tim. 2 13 
in his most exact discussion of denial : " On which account. He 
can never deny Himself." 

Titus. 

Titus is quoted by Clement of Rome (ch. 2) : " Be not ready 
to repent of any kind deed, ready to every good work," Titus 3 1 . 
Perhaps he afterwards thinks of Titus 2 14 in writing (ch. 64) : " Who 
chose our Lord Jesus Christ and us by Him to be a peculiar 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— TIM., TIT., REVELATION 211 

people." As for Tatian, we have direct testimony from Jerome 
that he insisted upon the genuineness of Titus. Perhaps Titus 
2 12 guides Theophilus in writing of God (3. 9) : " Who also 
teaches us to act justly and to be pious and to do good." In 
another passage (2. 16) he takes God's blessing the beasts from 
the waters on the fifth day as a sign that : " Men were about to 
receive repentance and remission of sins through water and bath 
of the new birth, those approaching in truth and born anew and 
receiving blessing from God," Titus 3 5 . 



Philemon. 

Of course, we cannot look for many references to the tiny 
letter to Philemon. There is, however, a curious likeness, even 
in some of the words used, between a paragraph in Ignatius' 
letter to the Ephesians (ch. 2) and the letter to Philemon ( 7 - 20 ). 



Revelation. 

We have reached the last book, the book of Revelation. The 
strange fate of this book must be dealt with again. Here .we 
have at first to recall what was above said as to the way in which 
it was connected with Cerinthus. Cerinthus would, so far as we 
can see, have written an entirely different book, and it is even 
probable that he wrote one or more books in imitation of this book. 
Nevertheless it was conjectured in the third century that he was 
the author of it itself. This was early criticism. But it was too 
late to be informed. Perhaps the Ophites drew from Rev. 2 24 . 
Hippolytus (5. 6; p. 132 [94]) says of them: "After this they 
called themselves Gnostics, saying that they alone knew the 
depths." I am not inclined to think that they got the words 
from this passage. It would in the same way be possible to 
connect the twenty-four angels of Justin the Gnostic with Rev. 4 4 , 
and the twenty-four elders. Justin the Gnostic says (Hipp. 5. 26 ; 
pp. 218, 220 [151]): "Of these four-and-twenty angels the 
fatherly ones accompany the Father and do all things according 
to His will, and the motherly ones the mother Eden. And the 
multitude of all these angels together is paradise." 



212 THE CANON 

Hermas describes the Church (Vis. 4. 2) in words drawn from 
Rev. 21 2 : "After the beast had passed me and had gone on 
about thirty feet, behold a virgin met me adorned as going out 
from the bridal chamber." He often uses the thoughts and the 
words of Revelation. The Marcosians, speaking of the descent 
of the dove at the baptism of Jesus, say (Iren. 1. 14. 6) : " Which 
is Omega and Alpha." In another place (1. 15. 1) they again 
insist upon the connection of the number of the dove with Alpha 
and Omega. The Greek letters of the word for dove count up 
to eight hundred and one, and that is the numerical value of 
Alpha and Omega. They probably drew the two letters from 
Rev. i 8 . We observed above that Justin Martyr named John 
as the author of Revelation. He quotes Rev. 20 2 as follows in 
his Apology (ch. 28) : " For with us the chief of the evil demons 
is called serpent and Satan and devil, as also you can learn, 
searching out of our writings." Eusebius tells us that Theo- 
philus quoted from Revelation. Irenaeus (5. 35. 2) quotes 
Rev. 20 15 : " And if anyone, it says, is not found written in the 
Book of Life, he is sent into the lake of fire." He adds then 
2 1 1 ' 4 . Just before he names John as author of the Revelation, 
and quotes three other passages. 

We have approached the end of the second century and we 
stand at the year 190, or between 190 and 200. We have seen 
that, with varying exactness or with varying freedom and looseness, 
the writers of these early years of Christianity have shown that 
they knew and treasured many of the books of the New 
Testament. We have already by thoroughly unimpeachable 
witnesses shown that the greater part of the books of the New 
Testament are at this time in general use in the Church, and that 
the use made of them assigns to them a special value. Not only 
the writers who are in positions of authority in many of the 
scattered societies of the regular Christians, but also a number 
of those who are leaders in groups of Christians, who for different 
reasons have separated themselves from or have been declared 
foreign to the usual, general line of churches and Christians, have 
shown by the way in which they name, or allude to, or copy as 
models, or quote these books, that they consider them as of a 
peculiar as of the highest religious authority. In so far as anyone 
may be inclined to lay stress upon the fact that the quotations 
are often loose, and may wish to draw 7 the conclusion that the 



THE AGE OF IREN^EUS— READING IN CHURCH 21 3 

books were not highly valued, it is pertinent to point out that we 
have found a like looseness also in quotations from the books of 
the Old Testament, the normative value of which was supposed 
to be certainly fixed. 

We saw some distance back that the first books used in the 
Christian churches for public reading were the books of the 
Old Testament, and that these alone could lay claim to be read 
as of divine authority, as writings that speak from God to man. 
The question now arises for us, whether we can at this point 
discover any change in the books read in church, whether we 
can detect any change in the way in which given books are 
read. At the earlier period the liturgical division : God to Man, 
contained only these books of the Old Testament, and it was 
even a question whether all of them were really firmly settled as 
authoritative. The books of the New Testament at that time 
were read in the division, the liturgical division : Man to Man, 
had the same right to be read as a sermon, a letter by a bishop, 
or any instructive Christian treatise. No one thought of them 
as standing on a line with the books of the Old Testament, which 
claimed an unimpeachable divine authority. It is above all clear 
that we have nowhere during the course of our investigations 
seen any tokens of an official declaration touching the public 
reading. But it is also clear from the slight hints here and there 
as to the reading of books, and from the now distinct attachment 
to the books of the New Testament of the words " it is written," 
"it is spoken," or "scripture," that these books are looked upon 
as fully equal to those of the Old Testament. Going back to the 
beginning, we must, if I am not mistaken, conceive of the process 
in the following way, not forgetting that we are reasoning from 
common sense and not drawing from documents, but also insisting 
upon it that the documents say nothing which makes this view of 
the process impossible or even improbable. 

The churches which received the Epistles of Paul read these 
Epistles in their gatherings, ever and again as part of the division : 
Man to Man. The supposition that they read such Epistles but 
once or at most two or three times is manifestly absurd. It is 
absurd because of the importance of the Epistles, the lack of much 
other matter, and the need of material for the weekly or even 
more frequent services. And it is absurd from the view of the 
documents. For if the letter of Clement of Rome was repeatedly 



214 THE CANON 

read at Corinth, and was read in other churches as well, of course 
as : Man to Man, much more will the letters of Paul to the 
Corinthians and to other churches have been repeatedly read before 
the assembled Christians. Precisely how often they were read 
and re-read cannot be determined. We have no reason to sup- 
pose that at the first any rule was made as to this point. 

It may be observed here in a parenthesis that the Old Testa- 
ment was probably read originally in the Christian assemblies 
about in the same way as in the synagogues. That is the only 
reasonable supposition. The earliest Christians were largely Jews, 
and may even often have continued to visit synagogues after 
becoming Christians. They were used to reading given books at 
given times in given quantities, and the natural impulse will have 
been still to do the same. Moreover, it is likely that this habit, the 
habit of reading the Old Testament as the Jews did, passed over 
to such Christian communities, where there were such, which 
were entirely of heathen birth. The given thing was to do as the 
others did. The apostles and preachers who brought the Gospel 
to them will certainly have proceeded according to their custom, 
and have handed down this custom to the newly planted 
churches. 

To return to our main topic, the division God to Man con- 
tained the Old Testament. The division Man to Man contained 
a verbal proclamation of the Gospel. This may have been by a 
passing apostle — a wandering preacher, but must in the larger 
number of cases have been by a man from the given church. 
In very many cases this last, merely local preacher will have had 
little to say, or there will even have been no one in the church 
who could pretend to speak to the rest. Here a letter from an 
apostle like Paul will have often been used, as soon as the church 
could get possession of one. So soon, however, as the Gospels 
were written, these accounts of the words and deeds of Jesus 
must have been eagerly welcomed in such smaller communities 
as were unable to find regular speakers for their meetings, and as 
were able to buy a Gospel. This Gospel will then have been read, 
as the Epistles of Paul were read, in the part : Man to Man. It 
will have replaced or been used as a substitute for the not avail- 
able wandering preacher who brought word of Jesus. This is the 
first stage of the public use of the books of the New Testament, 
to which we called attention above. 



THE AGE OF IREN^US— READING IN CHURCH 21 5 

The number of churches increased rapidly, and the size of 
the churches in the great centres grew. The consequence was 
that the number of apostles, of wandering preachers, was no 
longer in a position to supply the calls for their services. And, 
since we have no reason to suppose that a large succession of 
such wandering preachers — much as Eusebius presses the 
missionary spirit at the time of Pantsenus— , such missionaries, 
continued and enlarged their sphere, these preachers will have 
become more and more rare. Thus the demand increased, 
whereas the supply diminished. This forced the Christian 
communities to lay more stress upon the written Gospel, to 
secure for themselves in some measure words of Jesus and 
words of the apostles to fill up the part of the church services 
denoted as Man to Man. The intense interest attaching to 
this newer literature, and the wish to have variety in it and to 
possess it in all its fulness, will have led to the interchange of 
books between the churches, to the sending of copies of books 
to churches that did not own any or precisely the given books. 
With the increase in the amount of this newer literature its 
peculiar value began to dawn upon the Christian mind. 

What the Christians wished to know of, to hear of, to discuss, 
was not the Messiah of the Old Testament who was in the Old 
Testament future, but the Jesus of the New Testament who 
had already come, and the Christ who was still and soon to 
return to earth and to them who belonged to Him. Therefore 
the reading of the new books demanded and secured more and 
more attention, and this reading assumed in the weekly services 
a more and more important position. This was, I take it, an 
absolute necessity, and need not in the least be placed in 
connection with thoughts of a violent opposition to or of a 
dislike to Judaism and a consequent turning away from the 
Jewish books. From the middle of the second century onwards 
Judaism loses its weight as an opponent of Christianity, in so 
far as it had not lost it immediately after the destruction of 
Jerusalem. Justin Martyr's discussion with Trypho may be 
taken as a combination of his and that Jew's philosophical and 
rabbinical disposition to debate upon the questions common 
to them, or as a treatise due from the Greek Neapolitan to his 
Hebrew countrymen, or as a first Christology of the Old 
Testament with the vivid background offered by Trypho and 



216 THE CANON 

his friends, but not as a sign that at that day the relations of 
Christianity to Judaism as such filled an extremely large space 
in Christian thought and life. 

All in all it seems to me to be likely that before the middle 
of the second century the books of the New Testament in 
general, and I may name the four Gospels and the Epistles of 
Paul in particular, had passed over from the liturgical division 
Man to Man into the division God to Man. That in some places 
doubts should have arisen as to whether one book or another 
belonged within or without the peculiarly sacred books was not 
strange. It was the less strange because even then some of the 
books of the Old Testament were scarcely fixed in their position 
of strictly normative value. 

A single suggestion is here in place. It is constantly argued, 
from the presence of other than New Testament books in the 
Sinaitic, the Vatican, and the Alexandrian manuscripts of the 
Greek Bible, that the said books were at the places at which 
those manuscripts were written regarded as fully equal to the 
books of the New Testament. It seems to me to be a question 
whether at that early date this conclusion is valid. As regards 
the Sinaitic and the Vatican manuscripts, I think it likely that 
they are among the earliest leaf-books and among the earliest 
complete Bibles, among the earliest books which brought together 
the many rolls which till then had contained the Scriptures. 
Under these circumstances I think it possible that the other 
books were added to the books of the New Testament for con- 
venience in use in the church services, without an intention on 
the part of those who inserted them in the manuscript to say that 
they were divine Scripture. This is, I think, possible. But it is 
necessary to insist upon the point urged above, that uncertainties 
and doubts as to various books are under such circumstances 
thoroughly natural and to be looked for. 

It should at this place be observed, that the number of 
books that were written up to this time was not very great, but 
it is still more important to emphasise the fact that so few of 
those written have been preserved to us. Had we more books, 
even heretical ones, we should have more testimony. 

It is clear that the question as to the existence of a New 
Testament book is not to be confounded with the question as 
to its general acceptance and authoritative valuation. The three 



THE AGE OF IREN/EUS— READING IN CHURCH 21? 

synoptic Gospels found their way gradually into general use. 
The Gospel of John must have found immediate acceptance. 
The book of Acts was unquestionably in existence at an early 
date, but may not have become generally used before the 
middle of the second century. First Peter gradually found 
acceptance. First John doubtless accompanied, or followed 
close upon the heels of, the Gospel. The other Catholic Epistles 
we have still to deal with. The Epistles of Paul found severally 
and locally immediate acceptance, and probably at a very early 
date general spread and acceptance. The Epistle to the 
Hebrews is, as we have seen, testified to before the close of the 
first century, yet it found, as we shall see, difficulty in some 
quarters at a later time. The book of Revelation was curiously 
enough generally accepted at an early date, but fell afterwards 
into discredit in some districts, and will therefore again attract 
our attention. 

The last point that we need to allude to is the important 
fact that up to this time, up to the time of Irenseus, up about 
to the close of the second century, we have not found the least 
sign of anything like an official declaration as to the canonicity 
of any one book or of a number of the books of the New 
Testament. 

Leaving this period, we advance to a new one in which we 
no longer have to search with a lantern for signs of the presence 
and use of the books of the New Testament in general. Our 
eyes will now be directed to three things. We shall seek for 
signs, first, of a certain and sure act making the books of the 
New Testament canonical ; and secondly, of the use and apprecia- 
tion of seven books that have thus far failed to attain such 
general recognition as the rest; and thirdly, of the use and 
appreciation of other books, be they totally apocryphal or be 
they nearly equivalent to the acknowledged books. 



218 



IV. 

THE AGE OF O RIG EM 

200-300. 

In passing from the second to the third century we enter into a 
totally new scene. The landscape, the persons, the movements 
in the new age are of an entirely different character from those 
in the period left behind. Between Clement of Rome in the 
year 95, and Irenseus in the year, say, 185, in Lyons, we had to 
flit about from Antioch to Smyrna, from Nabulus to Ephesus, 
from Philippi to Rome, and to Lyons. And no orthodox or 
regular writer was with certainty to be fixed in Africa. Now we 
have in the main to do with Africa alone, although we may 
make some excursions into other lands. The persons who 
attracted our attention during the second century were out of 
very different lands, but all of them wrote Greek. The five men 
whom we have to discuss during the third century are all of 
them, at least by residence if not by birth, Africans, and two 
of them are Latin writers. The men treated of before were of 
varied occupations, though largely officials of a more or less 
definite standing in various churches. Justin Martyr wore the 
robe of a philosopher. Hegesippus was a traveller. Turning 
to the third century, we have to do with three professors of 
theology, with one lawyer, and with a single bishop. And the 
movements that occur are of another description. Those schools 
of Gnostics find no rival in the new period. No heretic arises 
to outdo Marcion. No one vies with Tatian in harmonising and 
condensing the four Gospels into one. 

Our aim now is to be on the watch for signs of any action 
canonising books, to examine most closely all that pertains to 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA 219 

the use and the Church standing of the seven books, — James, 
Second Peter, Second and Third John, Jude, Hebrews, and 
Revelation, — and to mark what books approach in use and 
valuation the books of the New Testament, and how they are 
treated. The first of these three points calls for no recapitula- 
tion. As to the second, we found already for James a possible 
testimony in Clement of Rome, a sure one in Hermas, and a 
probable one in the Old-Syrian translation, — for Second Peter 
no particle of testimony, — for Second and Third John the testi- 
mony of the fragment of Muratori, — for Jude also Muratori, — 
for Hebrews the abundant testimony of Clement of Rome, and 
that of Justin Martyr, of Pinytus, bishop of Cnossus on Crete, 
and of Theophilus of Antioch, — and for Revelation the testi- 
mony of Hermas, of the Marcosians, and of Theophilus and 
Irenseus, possibly of Papias and Melito ; while Justin Martyr 
expressly names John as its author. The recapitulation for the 
third point we leave until the close of this period, where we shall 
sum up all that needs to be said of these companions to the 
books of the New Testament, and of their fate in the Church 
from the beginning until to-day. 

If we only knew more of Pantaenus we should probably have 
to place him at the head of the line of scholars in this age. 
He was towards the close of the second century the teacher, 
the director, of the theological school in Alexandria, and had, 
it is likely, before taking charge of the school, gone as a 
missionary to the East, reaching India and finding that the 
Apostle Bartholomew had preceded him there, and had left 
behind him the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew. His 
pupil Clement succeeded him in the school. The school has 
been supposed by some to date from the time of Mark's stay 
in Alexandria. We have not any reliable ground for that state- 
ment, yet it is quite possible that Pantaenus had known disciples 
of the apostles. 

Clement, to whom we now have to turn, tells us of his 
own teachers, including Pantaenus, and shows us that the 
frequency and the extent of the intercourse among the 
churches and Christians of his day was no less than that 
which we have become acquainted with during the previous 
period. It is at the beginning of his great work called the 
Carpets. He writes of this work : " And now this affair is not 



220 THE CANON 

a book artistically composed for show, but it treasures up 
memories for me for old age, an antidote for forgetfulness, an 
image without art, and a picture of those real and soulful saintly 
men, and truly worthy of praise, whose words I had the honour 
of hearing. Of these one was in Greece, the Ionian, and one 
in Great Greece (Southern Italy), another of them was from 
Ccele-Syria, and one from Egypt, and others throughout the 
East, where one was from the Assyrians, one in Palestine by 
origin a Hebrew, and meeting the last one — this one was in 
power the first — I stopped, having hunted after hidden things in 
Egypt. The bee, in reality Sicilian, harvesting the flowers both 
of the prophetic and of the apostolic meadow, implanting a 
true thing of knowledge in the souls of his hearers. But they 
preserving the pure tradition of the blessed teaching directly 
both from Peter and James, both from John and Paul of the 
holy apostles, son receiving it from father — but few were those 
like unto the fathers — came then with God also to us sowing 
those ancestral and apostolical seeds." It is a pity that Clement 
did not name his teachers. Nevertheless the testimony for the 
wide acquaintance of Clement with scholars from all parts of the 
empire, and for the frequent communication between distant 
countries, remains. 

The information that we wish for from Clement we get 
through Eusebius, who describes Clement's work, named 
Sketches, as follows (H. E. 6. 14): "And in the Sketches, 
speaking briefly, he makes short comments on all the testa- 
ment-ed Scripture," — on all the books in the two Testaments, 
one would think, seeing that he treated at least of some Old 
Testament books, — " not passing by the books that are spoken 
against, I mean the Epistle of Jude and the rest of the Catholic 
Epistles, and both Barnabas and the Revelation called Peter's. 
And he says that the Epistle to the Hebrews is Paul's, and was 
written to the Hebrews in the Hebrew tongue ; and that Luke, 
having translated it carefully, published it for the Greeks, for 
which reason the same colouring is found in the translation of 
this Epistle as in the Acts. And that the usual, Paul the 
Apostle, was not written at the beginning of the letter, probably, 
he says, because, writing to the Hebrews, who had taken a 
prejudice to him, and suspected him, he, with thorough prudence, 
did not at the outset rebuff them by putting in his name. 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA 221 

Then he (Clement) adds farther on : " And as even the blessed 
presbyter " — he seems to mean Pantaenus — " said, since the 
Lord, being the Apostle of the Almighty, was sent to the 
Hebrews, in his modesty Paul, as sent to the Gentiles, does not 
write himself down as apostle of the Hebrews, not only because 
of the honour due to the Lord, but also because of its being 
a superfluous thing to write also to the Hebrews, seeing that 
he was a preacher and apostle of the Gentiles." 

Photius refers to the Sketches, and says (Cod. 109): "Their 
whole purpose is, as it were, explanations of Genesis, of Exodus, 
of the Psalms, of the Epistles, of the divine Paul, and of the 
Catholic [Epistles], and of Ecclesiastes." As Clement only 
commented on four of the Catholic Epistles, leaving out James 
and Third John, Photius is merely speaking generally in naming 
the Catholic Epistles without any limitation. In the sixth century 
Cassiodorius of Calabria, prime minister of Theodoric's, and 
others, and then founder of a monastery in Bruttia (Calabria), 
wrote a general theological handbook for his monks, in which 
he says (de inst. 8) : " In the canonical " — that is for us the 
Catholic — " Epistles, moreover, Clement, an Alexandrian pres- 
byter, who is also called the Carpet-er," — from that book the 
high-coloured Carpets, — " explained in Attic language the First 
Epistle of Saint Peter, the First and Second of Saint John, and 
James," — but James is a mistake, probably of some copyist ; it 
must read Jude. Then Cassiodorius translated some of these 
comments, including some on Jude, none on James. 

It is perhaps enough when we say that Clement commented 
on these four Epistles, but we may add the following quotations 
for the sake of being sure. It is not strange that we find no 
quotation from the short Second John. That Clement fails 
to mention Third John may be because he did not know 
of its existence, although he might have thought it scarcely 
worth mentioning because of its shortness and of its similarity 
in some phrases to Second John. As for Jude, however, 
Clement refers to the verses 8 to 16 thus (Strom. 3. 2. 11): 
"About these, I think, and the like heresies Jude spoke 
prophetically in his Epistle : ' Nevertheless, these also likewise 
dreaming — for waking they atta< k the truth — as far as : And 
their mouth utters swelled-up things.'" Now it may be that 
Clement wrote that just so, with " as far as " instead of giving all 



222 THE CANON 

the verses. But it is possible that a lazy copyist put in " as far 
as " and left the verses out. In either case it is a large quotation, 
and fixes Clement's use of Jude, which he quotes several times 
besides. Clement often quotes Hebrews. It is enough to 
mention one passage. He gives us Heb. 6 11 * 20 , precisely in the 
same way as those verses in Jude (2. 22. 136) : "And we desire 
that each one of you show the same zeal unto the fulness of 
hope, until : Being a high priest to eternity, according to the 
order of Melchisedek." Out of the several quotations from 
Revelation I take this free one (5. 6. 35) : " And they say that 
the seven eyes of the Lord are seven spirits resting upon the 
staff flowering up out of the root of Jesse." That is an odd 
confusion of memory for Rev. 5 6 . However, we have gotten 
from Clement of Alexandria clear testimony to Second John, 
Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation ; but nothing for James, Second 
Peter, or Third John. 

From Alexandria we now pass towards the west, and we 
find at Carthage the lawyer Tertullian. He is not a petty 
advocate, but a man of note and influence, one whose business 
may call him to Rome. He is a lawyer, but a Christian. 
He is not half a Christian, but a whole one. He may write 
sometimes a not very polished Latin, but he knows how to 
put life and fire into the words. He burns and it burns within 
us. We must quote a section from his work against Marcion 
in which he shows himself a believer in tradition. And when 
we reflect how short the course of tradition from the apostles to 
him was, his words have great weight for us. He writes (4. 5) : 
" In short, if it be agreed that that is truer which is earlier, 
that earlier, which is even from the beginning, that from the 
beginning which is from the apostles, it will also likewise surely 
be agreed that that was handed down from the apostles which 
has been sacredly preserved among the churches of the apostles. 
Let us see what milk the Corinthians drank from Paul, according 
to what rule the Galatians were reproved, what the Philippians, 
the Thessalonians, the Ephesians read, what also the Romans 
from our neighbourhood proclaim, to whom both Peter and 
Paul left the Gospel and that sealed by their blood. We have 
also churches cherished by John. For although Marcion rejects 
his Revelation, yet the series of bishops traced to its source 
will rest upon John as their founder. Thus also the high birth 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— TERTULLIAN 223 

of the rest is recognised. And therefore I say that among them, 
and not only among the apostolic churches but also among 
all the churches which are confederated with them in the 
fellowship of the oath (sacrament), that Gospel of Luke which 
we defend with all our might stands fast from the moment it 
was published, but Marcion's [Luke] is unknown to the most, 
known, moreover, to none without being at once condemned." 

We have then to ask, what this Tertullian thinks of our seven 
books. Four of them : James, Second Peter, Second and Third 
John, he does not appear to know at all. It might merely be 
questioned as to the two last, whether he simply passed them 
by as short and without thinking that they were not genuine. 
The ease with which they might have been, may have been 
overlooked will be clear from the case of Jude. Jude he 
mentions by name as apostolic. Now, interestingly enough, 
he mentions it (de cultu fern. 1. 3) at the close of a discussion 
of the canonicity of the book of Enoch. He suggests that the 
Jews may have refused Enoch a place in their closet because 
it spoke of Christ, and agrees that it is no wonder that they 
reject a book that spoke of Him, seeing that they did not 
receive Him speaking before them. He concludes : " To this 
comes the fact that Enoch possesses testimony in the Apostle 
Jude." Just nine words give us his view of Jude. The sen- 
tence is a mere trifle. As men say : he happens to add the 
thought. And were it not for this trifle we should know 
nothing of his valuation of Jude. How easily, then, Second 
and Third John may have escaped his pen. How about the 
two other books ? Tertullian is perfectly well acquainted with 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, but he only quotes it once. 
He writes (de pud. 20) : " Nevertheless I wish in a redundant 
way to adduce also the testimony of a certain companion of 
the apostles, fit to confirm of next right the discipline of the 
masters. For there exists also a writing of Barnabas to the 
Hebrews, a man sufficiently authorised by God, whom Paul 
placed beside himself in the matter of abstinence : Or have 
I alone and Barnabas no right to work. And would that the 
letter of Barnabas were rather received among the churches than 
that apocryphal Shepherd of the adulterers. And so admonishing 
£he disciples, leaving all beginnings behind to stretch forward 
rather to perfection nor again to lay the foundations of re- 



224 THE CANON 

pentance from the works of the dead. For it is impossible, 
he says, that those who have once been enlightened and have 
tasted the heavenly gift," . . . and he continues the quotation 
to the end of the eighth verse. 

For myself I accept Tertullian's opinion as to the authorship 
of Hebrews. But the interesting thing is, that he does not accept 
it as equal to the mass of the books of the New Testament. For 
him it is not New Testament at all. It is as he says, like a 
lawyer, a title, it is an enunciation, a letter, a book, and it is 
quite a respectable book, but it is not scripture. It was not 
written by a Twelve- Apostle and not by Paul, and not by a brother 
of Jesus. It is better than Hermas. On that point he has a 
definite opinion. But it is not apostolic. I accept Tertullian's 
author, but I put the book fairly into the New Testament, as he 
did not. One book remains : Tertullian is thoroughly convinced 
that the Revelation was written by the Apostle John, and he 
refers to it constantly as an authoritative book. He writes : " For 
also the Revelation of John," " For also the Apostle John in 
the Revelation," "Also in the Revelation of John," quoting 
verse after verse. For Tertullian and for Carthage we have thus 
testimony touching Jude and Revelation, and testimony of a 
second-class intention for Hebrews. 

We return now to Alexandria and to the old theological 
school, and to Clement's pupil and successor the giant Origen. 
He personifies the intercourse between distant churches and 
the intense eagerness of what may with justice be called 
scientific theological research in the Church of his day. Origen 
knew not merely Alexandria, but as well Rome and Antioch 
and Arabia and Athens and Caesarea. His testimony has for us 
a high value. He was an exegete. He knew the books of the 
Bible. Eusebius tells us (H. E. 6. 25) that: "Also in the fifth 
book of the commentaries upon the [Gospel] according to John, 
the same [Origen] says this about the Epistles of the Apostles : 
Now he who was enabled to become a servant of the new 
covenant, not of letter but of spirit, Paul, who caused the Gospel 
to abound from Jerusalem and around as far as Illyria, not only 
did not write to all the churches which he taught, but also sent 
[but] a few lines to those to which he wrote. And Peter, upon 
whom the Church of Christ is built, against which hell's gates 
shall not prevail, left behind him one Epistle that is acknow- 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— ORIGEN 225 

ledged, possibly a second, for it is called in question. What need 
to speak of the one reclining on Jesus' breast, John, who left 
behind him one Gospel, confessing that he could make so many 
that not even the world could contain them? And he wrote 
also the Revelation, having been commanded to be silent and 
not to write the voices of the seven thunders. And he left 
behind also an Epistle of altogether few lines. It may be also 
a second and a third. Since all do not say that these are 
genuine. But both are not of a hundred lines." 

In his homilies on Joshua (7. 1), which unfortunately are only 
preserved in a translation, Origen takes fire at the sound of the 
priestly trumpets moving around the walls of Jericho at the com- 
mand of that earlier Jesus : " But our Lord Jesus Christ coming, 
whose advent that former son of Nun pointed out, sends as priests 
His apostles bearing well-drawn trumpets, the magnificent and 
heavenly doctrine of preaching. First Matthew sounded with 
priestly trumpet in his Gospel. Mark also, and Luke, and John 
sang each with their priestly trumpets. Peter also sounds with 
the two" — one reading says: from the three — trumpets of 
his Epistles. James also and Jude. None the less does John 
also here still further sing with the trumpets by his Epistles 
and the Revelation, and Luke describing the deeds of the 
apostles. Latest of all, moreover, that one coming who said : 
I think, moreover, that God makes a show of us newest apostles, 
and thundering with the fourteen trumpets of his Epistles he 
threw down to the very foundations the walls of Jericho and 
all the contrivances of idolatry, and the dogmas of the 
philosophers." We may remain in doubt at this, whether he 
himself wrote " fourteen " Epistles for Paul, calling Hebrews 
his, or whether the translator changed thirteen to fourteen. 
In his homilies (13. 2) on Genesis he calls the apostles the sons, 
the servants, the boys of Isaac: "Therefore Isaac also digs 
new wells, rather the sons of Isaac dig. The sons of Isaac are 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. His sons are Peter, James, 
and Jude. His son is also the Apostle Paul. Who all dig 
the wells of the New Testament. But for these" — for the 
possession of these new wells — " contend those who like 
earthly things, nor suffer new things to be instituted nor old 
ones to be cleaned. They oppose the Gospel wells. They 
war against the apostolical wells." 

15 



226 THE CANON 

Hebrews he discusses at length. He quotes it more than 
two hundred times, sometimes saying : The Apostle, or the 
Epistle to the Hebrews, or Paul, or Paul in the Epistle te 
the Hebrews. He wrote homilies on it after the year 245, 
and in these homilies he gives us the following judicious ac- 
count of the Epistle, which Eusebius (H. E. 6. 25) has saved 
for us : " About the Epistle to the Hebrews he presents these 
words in his homilies on it : Everyone who understands how 
to distinguish the difference of phrases would agree that the 
character of the style of the Epistle entitled as that to the 
Hebrews has not in its wording the peculiarities of the apostle, 
who confessed that he was an unlearned man in speech, that 
is in the phrasing, but that the Epistle is more thoroughly Greek 
in the composition of the wording. And again, moreover, that 
the thoughts of the Epistle are wonderful and are not inferior 
to those of the writings that are acknowledged to be apostolical, 
and this every one giving heed to the reading which is apostolical 
would say with me to be true. After other things he adds 
to this, saying : Speaking freely, I should say that the thoughts 
were of the apostle, but the wording and the composition 
were of some one drawing the apostolical things from his 
memory, and as it were of one who wrote notes upon what 
had been spoken by the teacher. If then any church holds 
this Epistle as Paul's, let it be content with this thought. For 
the men of old did not in vain hand it down as Paul's. But 
who wrote the Epistle, the truth God knows. The account has 
come to us of some who say that Clement who became Bishop of 
Rome wrote the Epistle, and of others [who say] that Luke, the 
one who wrote the Gospel and the Acts, [wrote it]." 

In his commentary on the Psalms (Ps. 30) we read a reference 
to James as a proof that the word spirit is applied by Scripture 
sometimes to the soul, the psyche : " As in James : And as the 
body without the spirit is dead," James 2 26 . In another place, in 
his commentary on John (vol. 20. 10), he speaks as though some 
would not take what James said for authoritative : " This would 
not be conceded by those who receive the saying. Faith without 
works is dead," James 2 20 . But the weight of the words " who 
receive" as a questioning of the authority of the Epistle is 
diminished by the fact that Origen immediately continues : " Or 
of those hearing/' and quotes Romans It is further interesting 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— ORIGEN AND DIONYSIUS 227 

to see that he does not use the reading "vain" or "ineffective," 
but draws the word "dead" from v. 17 . In the same com- 
mentary on John, a little earlier (vol. 19. 23 [6]), he calls it a 
letter that is in circulation, as if it were not a genuine letter : 
" And if faith is alleged, but chance to be without works, such is 
dead, as we have read in the current Epistle of James." It is 
further to be observed that in his commentary on Matthew, 
when he speaks at length of the brothers of Jesus, he mentions 
James, but says nothing of his Epistle. 

As for Jude, we may begin precisely at that point. In that 
commentary on Matthew (vol. 10. 17) he says: "And Jude 
wrote a letter but of few lines, yet filled with hearty (or strong) 
words of heavenly grace, who spoke in the preface : Jude a ' 
servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James." At a later 
point (vol. 17. 30) the phrase used for Jude is less definite: 
And if anyone should also bring in the letter of Jude, let 
him see what follows the word because of the saying : And 
the angels, those not keeping their first estate but leaving 
their own dwelling, he has kept in lasting bonds under darkness 
unto the judgment of the great day." We have already given 
above his unqualified allusion both to James and Jude in his 
general statements, and as well a qualified and an unqualified 
one to Second Peter ; the lack of qualification may in the latter 
case be due to the translator. In the case of the Epistles of 
John the mere plural would not distinguish between two or 
three Epistles, but we may keep to three because he mentions 
them in the first general statement. The book of Revelation 
we have found in the general summings-up, and we may add 
a single quotation from among many (on John, vol. 1. 14) : 
" Therefore John the son of Zebedee says in the Revelation : 
And I saw an angel flying in mid-heaven," Rev. 14 6 , and he 
quotes to the end of v. 7 . We have, then, from Origen 
firm testimony for Jude, Hebrews, and the Revelation, and 
wavering testimony for James, Second Peter, and Second and 
Third John. 

His pupil, Origen's pupil, Dionysius of Alexandria, took 
charge of the school there probably about the year 231, became 
Bishop of Alexandria about the year 247, and died about 265. 
He was twice banished. He was a live man, just such a one as 
the best pupil of Origen could be expected to make, and he was 



228 THE CANON 

in constant intercourse with Rome, of course with Csesarea, and 
with Asia Minor. He wrote a vigorous but short letter to 
Novatus to leave the church at Rome in peace and save his soul. 
Indeed, he reminds us with his letters of his less gifted namesake 
Dionysius of Corinth nearly a century earlier. He wrote not 
merely to the Egyptians, and, when banished, to his Alexandrian 
sheep, but also to Origen and to Laodicea, where Thelymidres was 
bishop, and to Armenia, where Meroudsanes was bishop, and to 
Cornelius, Bishop of Rome. He was called upon by Elenus, the 
Bishop of Tarsus in Cilicia, and the rest of those with him, by 
Firmilian in Cappadocia, and Theoctistus in Palestine to stand 
up against the followers of Novatus at the synod of Antioch. 
But that is enough to show his influence. 

The following paragraph from a letter of Dionysius' shows 
his view of the harmonious state of the Church in general, the 
persecutions having ceased and the Churches having given up 
their love for Novatus (Eus. H. E. 7. 5) : " And now, brother, 
know that all the Churches throughout the East and still beyond, 
that were torn apart, are united. And all the leaders everywhere 
are of one mind, rejoicing exceedingly at the peace which has 
come against expectation, — Demetrianos in Antioch, Theoctistus 
in Caesarea, Madzabanes in Aelia, Marinus in Tyre, Alexander 
having fallen asleep, Heliodorus in Laodicea. Thelymidres 
having gone to his rest, Elenus in Tarsus and all the churches 
of Cilicia, Firmilianus and all Cappadocia. For I have named 
only the more illustrious of the bishops, lest I should add length 
to the letter or undue heaviness to the discourse. Neverthe- 
less all the Syrias and Arabia, to each of which ye give aid and 
to which ye now wrote, and Mesopotamia, both Pontus and 
Bithynia, and to speak briefly all everywhere rejoice in oneness 
of mind and in brotherly love, glorifying God." 

Dionysius quotes the Epistle of James (Galland, vol. 14. 
App. p. 1 1 7 E) : " For God, he says, is not tempted by evils." 
He also refers (Eus. H. E. 6. 41) to Hebrews as written by 
Paul : " And the brethren turned aside and gave place (to their 
persecutors), and they received with joy, like those to whom also 
Paul bore witness, the plundering of their goods," Hebrews io 34 . 
And in his discussion of the book of Revelation he shows plainly 
that he regards the Second and Third Epistles of John as his, and 
we see that he claims their anonymity as a sign of John's incli- 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN — DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA 229 

nation to write anonymously : " And not even in the Second ana 
Third Epistles of John which are in our hands, although they are 
short, does John appear by name, but the presbyter writes 
anonymously." In the same connection, however, thirty lines 
later, he speaks of "the Epistle" more than once, and the 
Catholic Epistle, meaning the First Epistle, as if John had only 
written one. But we find a like numberless reference to the 
Second Epistle by Aurelius of Chullabi in the seventh council 
of Carthage, which was held in the year 256 during the lifetime 
of Dionysius (Routh, 3. p. 130): "John the apostle commanded 
(laid it down) in his Epistle saying : If anyone come to you and 
have not the teaching of Christ, refuse to admit him into your 
house, and do not greet him. For whoever shall have greeted 
(welcomed) him takes part in his evil deeds," 2 John 10 - n . 
The quotation is loose enough. We then have Dionysius' 
testimony for James, for Second and Third John, and for 
Hebrews, but nothing for Second Peter or Jude. As for the 
book of Revelation, we must give his words at length. 

Dionysius of Alexandria's discussion of the authorship of the 
Revelation is the first scientific discussion of the kind in the 
early Church that has been preserved until our day. It offers in 
its way for the criticism of the books of the New Testament a 
parallel to Origen's criticism of the text of certain passages. 
Eusebius (H. E. 7. 25) gives us first Dionysius' account of the 
way in which some Christians had previously treated Revelation : 
" For some then of those before us rejected and cast aside the 
book in every way, and correcting it chapter for chapter, and, 
showing that it was ignorant and unreasonable, declared that the 
title was forged. For they say that it is not from John, and that 
it is not even a revelation, being covered with the heavy and 
thick veil of ignorance, and that not only no one of the apostles, 
but not even any one of the saints or of those belonging to the 
Church, was the maker of this book, but Cerinthus, backing up 
the heresy called after him the Cerinthian, and wishing to set a 
name worthy of credence at the head of his own fabrication. For 
this is the dogma of his teaching, that Christ's kingdom will be 
earthly, and in this he dreams that it will consist in those things 
which he himself longed for, being a lover of the body and 
altogether fleshly, in satisfyings of the belly and of the things 
below the belly, that is in feastings and drinkings and marriages, 



23O THE CANON 

and in the things by means of which he thought that he would 
succeed in getting these things under more acceptable names, in 
feasts and offerings and sacrifices of sacred animals. But I 
should not dare to reject the book, since many of the brethren 
hold it with zeal, and I accept as greater than my consideration 
of the book the general opinion about it, and regard the explana- 
tion of the details in it for something hidden and most wonder- 
ful. For even if I do not understand, yet I presuppose that a 
certain deeper sense lies in the words. Not measuring and 
judging these things with a reasoning of my own, but attributing 
them rather to faith, I have thought that they were too high to 
be apprehended by me, and I do not reject these things which I 
have not seen with the rest, but am rather surprised that I have 
not also seen them." Thus Dionysius. 

Eusebius continues : " Thereat putting to the test the whole 
book of Revelation, and having shown that it is impossible to 
understand it according to the common conception, he adds, 
saying : " And having finished the whole prophecy, so to speak, 
the prophet blessed those who keep it, and so also himself. For 
blessed, he says, is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy 
of this book, and I John the one seeing and hearing these things. 
I have then nothing to oppose to his being called John, and 
to this book's being by John. For I agree that it is by some 
one holy and inspired, yet I should not easily suppose that this 
was the apostle, the son of Zebedee, the brother of James, of 
whom the Gospel according to John and the Catholic Epistle 
bear the name. For I judge from the bearing of each, and 
the shape of the discourse, and the outcome of the book, that 
it is not the same. For the Evangelist nowhere writes his name, 
by the bye, nor heralds himself, either by means of the Gospel 
or by means of the Epistle. Then a little farther on he says 
this again : And John nowhere neither as about himself nor 
as about another[?]. But the one writing the Revelation at 
once in the beginning sets himself at the head: Revelation of 
Jesus Christ which He gave to him to show to His servants 
speedily, and He signified it sending- by His angel to His servant 
John, who bore witness to the Word of God and to His testimony, 
to as many things as he saw. Then also he writes a letter : 
John to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace to you and 
peace. But the Evangelist did not even write his name before 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA 23 1 

the Catholic Epistle, but without needless words began with the 
very mystery of the divine revelation : That which was from the 
beginning, which we heard, which we saw with our eyes. For 
on occasion of this very revelation also the Lord called Peter 
blessed, saying : Blessed art thou Simon bar Jonah because flesh 
and blood did not reveal it to thee, but my Heavenly Father. 
But not in the Second that is circulated of John, or in the Third, 
although they are short Epistles, does John appear by name, but 
the presbyter writes namelessly. But this one did not even 
think it enough, having named himself once, to relate what 
follows, but he takes it up again : I, John, your brother and sharer 
with you in the suffering and kingdom and in patient waiting for 
Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the Word of 
God and the testimony of Jesus. And then also at the end he 
says this : Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy 
of this book, and I, John, who see and hear these things. That 
therefore John is the one who writes this is to be believed him- 
self saying it. Which one, however, this is, is not clear. For he 
did not, as often in the Gospel, say that he himself was the 
disciple loved by the Lord, or the brother of James, or the one 
who had been a self-seer and a self-hearer of the Lord. For he 
would have said something of these things that were made clear 
beforehand if he wished to display himself clearly." 

Dionysius then speaks of the many Johns : " As also Paul was 
much named, and Peter among the children of the believers," that 
is, that many boys were called Paul and Peter. He mentions John 
Mark, but thinks him unlikely to be the author. Then he refers 
to the other John in Ephesus, who appears to be more likely to 
have written it. He gives at length a view of the way in which 
the author of the Gospel and the First Epistle writes, and turning 
to the Revelation says : " But totally different and foreign to all 
this is the Revelation, neither joining on to nor approaching this 
in any way, almost so to speak not even having a syllable in 
common with it. And neither has the Epistle any reminder or 
any thought of the Revelation (for I let the Gospel pass), nor 
the Revelation of the Epistle, whereas Paul refers in passing by 
his Epistles also to his revelations which he did not write out by 
themselves. And further also the difference of the language 
between the Gospel and the Epistle over against the Revelation 
is to be emphasized. For the former are written not only 



232 THE CANON 

faultlessly as regards the Greek speech, but also most logically 
in the phrases, the arguments, the composition of the explanations. 
It goes very hard to find in them a barbarous sound, a solecism, 
or any personal peculiarity. For he had, as it appears, each of 
the two words, the Lord having granted them to him, the word 
of knowledge and the word of diction. But that this one saw 
a revelation and received knowledge and prophecy, I do not 
deny ; nevertheless I see his dialect and his tongue not Grecising 
accurately, but using barbaric idioms and occasionally also 
committing solecisms." 

Dionysius was a great and a learned and an influential man. 
He was not like Origen, for years before his death the object of 
ecclesiastical hatred in Alexandria. Yet nevertheless his dis- 
cussion of the Revelation in this way seems to have had but 
little effect upon his surroundings or his successors, although it 
certainly may have had a share in the shaping of the general 
fate of the book of Revelation of which we have still to treat. 
Dionysius stands for James, Second and Third John, Hebrews, 
and for the Revelation as from an unknown John, but not for 
Second Peter or Jude, so far as we can see. 

Now we turn again to the West, again to Carthage. This 
time we have to do not with a lawyer but with a bishop. Cyprian 
was born at Carthage in the year 200, and taught rhetoric there. 
He was baptized in 246, became presbyter and in 248 bishop of 
Carthage. In the Decian persecution he fled for safety to the 
desert, and under Valerian he was banished, but then beheaded 
in 258 in his native city. Cyprian gives no signs of having 
known anything about James, Second Peter, Second and Third 
John, Jude, or Hebrews. He is a great quoter of Scripture, and 
gives something from all the other books of the New Testament, 
saving Philemon and those just named. Of course, there is the 
bare possibility that he passed over one or the other short Epistle 
merely by accident, as doubtless was the case with Philemon, 
because it was short and offered little occasion for reference. 
Singularly enough, we have a reference apparently to Second 
Peter in a letter of Firmilian's, the bishop of Caesarea in 
Cappadocia, which we find in Latin among the letters of Cyprian 
(Ep. 75), to whom it was addressed. It will be remembered that 
Dionysius mentioned Firmilian. Firmilian appears to have the 
second chapter of Second Peter in mind when he writes to 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— CYPRIAN 233 

Cyprian that Peter and Paul, the blessed apostles, "have in 
their Epistles execrated the heretics and admonished us to 
avoid them." Cyprian, however, knows well the Revelation, and 
uses it freely. 

The heresy of Paul of Samosata, who was bishop of Antioch 
from 260 to 272, although excommunicated in 269, secures us 
a reference to Hebrews and perhaps one to Jude. The Synod 
at Antioch in the year 269 wrote a letter to Paul, and quoted 
Hebrews under the introduction (Routh, 3. pp. 298, 299) : 
" According to the apostle," which means according to Paul, and 
as the accompaniment to two quotations from First Corinthians : 
" And of Moses : Reckoning the shame of Christ greater riches 
than the treasures of Egypt," Heb. n 26 . The allusion to Jude 
is less clear. It is in the letter which Malchion, a presbyter at 
Antioch and the head of a Greek school there, wrote in the 
name of the bishops and presbyters and deacons of Antioch 
and of the neighbouring cities and the Churches of God, to 
Dionysius, bishop of Rome, and Maximus, bishop of Alexandria. 
Malchion (Routh, 3. p. 304) describes the Bishop Paul as one : 
" Denying his own God, and not keeping the faith which he 
also himself formerly had." That may be connected with 
Jude 3 and 4 . 

So we see that the great theological writers of this third 
century give us divided testimony as to the seven books to which 
we have especially directed our attention. James is supported by 
Dionysius of Alexandria, and in an uncertain way by Origen. 
Second Peter only has an uncertain testimony from Origen. 
Second John is supported by Clement of Alexandria and by 
Dionysius of Alexandria, but receives from Origen only an 
uncertain note. Third John rests here on Dionysius and on 
uncertain testimony from Origen. Jude is supported by Clement 
of Alexandria and by Tertullian and by Origen, the first of our 
seven books to find faith in the West. Hebrews can only appeal 
to the three Alexandrians : Clement, Origen, and Dionysius. 
Tertullian sets it aside as not a part of the New Testament, 
although he thinks it a very fair book. Revelation again, like 
the Epistle of Jude, finds support both East and West, for it is 
accepted by Clement and Origen at Alexandria and by 
Tertullian and Cyprian at Carthage, while Dionysius of Alex- 
andria accepts it, it is true, but insists upon it that the current 



234 THE CANON 

belief of its having been written by the Apostle John is 
altogether baseless. 

Our task for this period consisted of three parts. One is 
completed by the simple observation that we have nowhere 
found any signs of a canonization of the books of the New 
Testament, and with a single somewhat indistinct exception of 
a movement on the part of any synod to say just what books 
were genuine or what books were to be read, or what books were 
not to be read. The second task is completed by the review of 
the seven books just given. The third remains, the question as 
to the books w T hich are not in our New Testament and which 
yet appear at or up to his time, during this period or during an 
earlier period, to have held a place near to the books of the 
New r Testament. 

This question may be divided into two, in so far as we may 
ask on the one hand what books were in good and churchly 
circles associated with the books of the New Testament, and, 
on the other hand, what books anyone may have tried to forge 
in the name of the apostles. We must in advance make our 
minds up to one thing, namely, to the difficulty in many or in 
almost all cases of being perfectly sure in just what sense the 
churches, and with the churches the authors whom we have 
to consult, regarded the books in question. Further, it must be 
observed that in cases of doubt we have not the office to insist 
upon it that the given books must of necessity have been held 
by the churches to be equal to the books of the New Testament. 
Be there doubt, we have a right to suppose that what was the 
case elsewhere or before or after may be used to decide the case 
in favour of a distinction between the doubtful books and those 
that were certainly acknowledged. 

Still further is to be observed, that the happy-go-luckiness with 
which, the reckless way in which we have seen that the writers of 
the early literature, which we have had to examine, quote not 
only the books of the New Testament but also those of the Old 
Testament, permits us to argue that they certainly will not in every 
single case have paused to reflect whether or not in their rapid 
flight they should write or should not write : " As it is written," 
"As it is spoken," " The Scripture saith," or not. Should anyone 
urge that that will be true of cases touching the New Testament 
books, and that they may have been by these errors of flightiness 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— OUTSIDE BOOKS 235 

and carelessness denoted as Scripture by writers who upon sober 
reflection would not have thus designated them, we must con- 
cede it. But the error in the other cases is the error that is to 
be looked for, and we have a right, it is our duty in this examina- 
tion, to be especially upon our guard against it. At the same 
time we may declare in advance, from human necessity or from 
the consideration of the inevitable consequences of human 
frailty, that certainly one book or another will really have been 
quoted or used as canonical, although it is not in our New 
Testament, simply because the boundaries were not settled, 
because there was no definite boundary line between canonical 
and non-canonical books. 

Inasmuch as the question as to the valuation of a given book 
is largely combined with the question as to its being read in the 
assemblies of the Christians for public worship, it is necessary 
that we revert for a moment to what was said above on this 
point. What was read in the public meeting was read either 
under the head of: God to Man, or under the head of: Man to 
Man. It must not be overlooked that this is by no means a 
Christian innovation. For the Jews read before the time of 
Christ, so far as we can conjecture, various writings in the 
synagogue which were not as yet determined to be authoritative. 
Without doubt in some cases such public reading led the way to 
the authorization of the said books. Under God to Man at the 
close of the third century only the books of the Old Testa- 
ment and the books of the New Testament which were current 
in the given church could be read. At the middle of the century 
Cyprian had already placed the words of Jesus above those of the 
prophets, like the keynote to the Epistle to the Hebrews. And 
these words of Jesus were the words written in the Gospels 
(Cypr. de dom. orat. 1) : " Many are the things which God wished 
to be said and to be heard through the prophets His servants, 
but how much greater are those which the Son speaks." 

Whether the view of all the churches as to what was New 
Testament coincided with our view or not, is what we have 
here to examine. But no book could be read as from God 
to Man which had not then and there attained to this right 
of being considered a part of the New Testament. Under 
Man to Man might be brought first of all a sermon attach- 
ing to the passage or one of the passages read, or it may be 



236 , THE CANON 

to a special text. Of course, this sermon was originally, as we 
saw above, not attached to a text, but was a presentation of 
something verbal that corresponded to a written Gospel. This 
verbal Gospel had been succeeded by the written Gospel, which 
in the third century had already passed on to the division God 
to Man. The letters of the apostles were at first read here, but 
had now also passed on to that higher division. Finally, there 
might be read here a letter from a bishop, which makes us think 
of the letters of Dionysius of Corinth and of Dionysius of 
Alexandria, or a letter from another church. Nor was that all. 
It will not seldom have been the case that a preacher could not 
be had. Nowadays in Saxony in such a case the school teacher 
may be appointed to read a sermon written by the clergyman, or 
a printed sermon. In those early ages it was often desirable 
to have something to read in the place of the lacking sermon. 
Here then any good book, any book fitted to build up the 
listening assembly in Christian life, could be read. What 
should be read was at the first moment not determined by a 
synod of bishops. The single churches will have acted as the 
leading men in them decided. And it is to the books that we 
discover thus to have been read that we have now to give 
especial attention, and to try to decide whether they reached 
this distinction of public reading by right of the assumption that 
they were an utterance of God to Man, or whether they were 
merely regarded as good books which spoke for Man to Man as 
a sermon would speak. 

The first book that we have to consider is the letter of 
Clement of Rome to which we have already so often alluded. 
It is a book about whose origin at Rome, and by the hand of 
Clement a prominent Christian there, and probably about the 
year 95, there can be no reasonable doubt. We read above 
that Hegesippus stayed some time at Corinth on his way to 
Rome. Eusebius gives us, then, Hegesippus' testimony for this 
letter by adducing his statement that, as the letter presupposes, 
there really had then been an uproar, an unusual dissension, a 
revolution in the church at Corinth. Much more clear is the 
account, given above, from Dionysius, the bishop of Corinth, 
who mentions this letter in writing to the church of Rome or to 
Soter, the bishop of Rome, perhaps just before 175. Now his 
words are of great moment for the whole question touching the 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— CLEMENT OF ROME 237 

public reading of these non-apostolic books in the churches. 
He says (Eus. H. E. 4. 23): "To-day then we are passing the 
Lord's holy day, on which we read your letter, which we shall 
ever have, reading it now and then to keep it in mind, as also 
the former one written to us by Clement." Remembering what 
was said above about the point of view from which different 
writings might be read in church, we have in the first place to 
observe that Dionysius does not make a shadow of a distinction 
between the reading of the lately received letter of Soter's and 
the reading of the letter of Clement that had reached Corinth 
eighty years before. 

We must conclude from his words that Soter's letter was 
read as Clement's was, or reversed, that Clement's letter was read 
for the same reason, from the same standpoint, that Soter's was. 
I see no possible way of escaping this conclusion. But no one 
can for an instant think of supposing that the letter of Soter that 
had just come was read to the church at Corinth under the 
heading : God to Man, that it was read as if it were to be valued 
as highly as Paul's letters to the Corinthians. And therefore 
that must be the case with Clement. Here at Corinth, at the 
place from which the copies of the letter of Clement were sent 
out to neighbouring or even to distant churches, the letter of 
Clement of Rome was read as a letter of Man to Man, was read 
in the second, not in the first division of the writings used in 
public worship. This circumstance must have in general been 
of determining character for the other churches which received 
this letter from the Corinthians in a copy. And this fact will 
have to be borne in mind when we come to other similar writings. 
There may have been here or there a misconception as to the 
proper valuation of the letter, there may have been churches that 
took the decision in their own hands and declared this letter for 
the equal of the Pauline Epistles, but the decision of Corinth 
will certainly have been the chief and overwhelming decision for 
the case that anyone raised the question. 

Irenaeus speaks of Clement as having heard the apostles, and 
says (Eus. H. E. 5. 6): "At the time, then, of this Clement, 
there being no little dissension among the brethren in Corinth, 
the church in Rome sent a most powerful letter to the 
Corinthians gathering them together unto peace and renewing 
their faith." That he calls it a most powerful letter does not 



238 THE CANON 

suggest anything like canonicity. The word that he uses for 
letter is the word for scripture, but it is totally impossible to 
take it here in the specific sense of scripture. The sentence 
demands its being taken in the general sense of "writing," which 
I have given as " letter." Besides, Irenaeus uses the same adjective 
" most powerful," and the same root for written, only this time 
in a participle, in speaking of Polycarp's letter to the Philippians. 
So there is no thought of its being scripture in the mind of 
Irenaeus. Clement of Alexandria quotes his namesake often 
and with respect, but does not use his letter as scripture. The 
words : " The scripture saith somewhere," which begin a long, 
loose quotation from Clement of Rome in one place, belong to 
Clement of Rome himself, save that Clement of Alexandria has 
put in the word scripture because the first sentence is from 
Proverbs. He calls his namesake "the apostle Clement," but 
he also with the New Testament calls Barnabas an apostle, " the 
Apostle Barnabas." Origen calls him a " disciple of the apostles," 
and in one place "the faithful Clement who was testified to by Paul." 
As for Eusebius, it is curious that in one place (H. E. 6. 13) 
he puts it with the books that are disputed, saying of Clement of 
Alexandria that he uses "quotations also from the disputed 
writings ('scriptures,' it would be in a different connection), both 
from the so-called Wisdom of Solomon and that of Jesus Sirach 
and of the Epistle to the Hebrews, both from Barnabas and 
Clement and Jude." Yet in the following chapter Eusebius 
describes Clement of Alexandria's Sketches as explaining all the 
" testament-ed " scriptures, not even passing by the disputed ones, 
that is to say, Jude and the other Catholic Epistles and the letter 
of Barnabas and the Revelation bearing the name of Peter," 
leaving Clement out altogether. And when Eusebius gives the 
list of genuine, disputed, and spurious books he does not mention 
Clement at all, although he names a number of the less known 
books. He does in one passage (H. E. 3. 16) say of it: "And 
we know also that this is read publicly before the people in very 
many churches, not only of old, but also in our very own day " ; 
yet it is plain, taking all this together, that he does not think it 
to be scripture. Athanasius does not think it necessary to name 
it when he, at the close of his list of the books of scripture, 
excludes from that list the Teaching of the Apostles, which was 
attributed to Clement, and the Shepherd of Hermas. 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— CLEMENT AND BARNABAS 239 

Succeeding Church writers quote it, but never in such a waj 
as to indicate that it occurs to them to regard it as scripture. 
A reference to it among the books of the New Testament 
in the Apostolic Canons (Can. 85) of the sixth century is 
probably an interpolation, difficult as it is to imagine who would 
have put the words in. The Greek text has : " Of Jude one, of 
Clement two Epistles, and the Constitutions addressed to you 
the bishops by me Clement, . . . and the Acts of us the 
apostles." The Coptic text reads : " The Revelation of John ; 
the two Epistles of Clement which ye shall read aloud." In the 
Alexandrian manuscript of the Greek Bible the two letters, that 
is to say, this letter and the homily called Second Clement, stand 
after the Revelation. Had they been conceived of as regular 
books of the New Testament they should have stood with the 
other Epistles and before Revelation. The same manuscript 
contains three beautiful Christian hymns, which no one so far as 
I know supposes to be a part of the New Testament. A list of 
the scriptures added to Nicephorus' Chronography of the early 
ninth century put this letter among the Apocrypha. In the 
twelfth century Alexius Aristenus, the steward of the Great Church 
at Constantinople, refers to that list in the Apostolic Canons, and 
mentions the two letters of Clement as scripture, but he stands 
alone in this. The amount of it all is, that the letter of Clement 
of Rome may here or there possibly have been read as scripture, 
but that it never in any way approached general acceptance as 
anything more than a good Christian book. It does not appear 
to have been translated into Latin, so that there is not even a 
question as to its scriptural authority in the Latin Church. 

In the letter that bears the name of Barnabas we again find 
a name that occurs in the New Testament, and that the name of 
a man who plays a large part in the early Church and holds 
a more important position than either Clement or Hermas. 
Clement, however, may perhaps have been Paul's Clement, 
whereas neither the one nor the other of these other writers had 
anything to do with the times of the New Testament. The 
letter of Barnabas was probably written about the year 130. 
Whether its author really happened to bear the name of 
Barnabas or not we do not know, for we know nothing about 
him aside from his book. The book itself is certainly very 
interesting. We find that it was especially valued and used in 



240 THE CANON 

Alexandria. Clement of Alexandria quotes it often, naming the 
author simply (2. 15. 67 and 18. 84) Barnabas, or (2. 6. 31 and 
7. 35) "the Apostle Barnabas." Once he writes (5. 10. 63): 
11 Barnabas who also himself preached the word with the apostle 
according to the service of the heathen (in the mission to the 
heathen)." Again he says (2. 20. 116): "I shall need no more 
words when I add as witness the apostolic Barnabas, who was of 
the Seventy and a fellow-worker of Paul's, saying word for word 
here. . . ." Origen quotes this letter also. For Tertullian we 
may draw a very fair conclusion from his view of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews, which we gave above. He thought that Hebrews 
was quite a good book, and he was certain that it was written by 
the real Barnabas, the companion of Paul, yet it did not occur 
to him to regard it as equal to scripture. How much less would 
he have thought that this " Barnabas " was scripture. 

The name Barnabas in the Stichometry in the Codex Claro- 
montanus is probably to be used as a proof that it was in good 
standing in Egypt at about the beginning of the fourth century. 
Eusebius places it in his list of books among those which are 
spurious, between the Revelation of Peter and the Teachings of the 
Apostles. In the Codex Sinaiticus of the Greek Bible it stands 
after the Revelation. As a part of the New Testament it would 
have taken a place among or with the Epistles, and before the 
book of Revelation. Jerome says that it is an apocryphal book, 
but that it is read. Its being read is simply no sign of its being 
scripture. It is read as : Man to Man, as a good book, but not 
as an equal of the apostolic books. In the list in Nicephorus' 
Chronography, Barnabas stands among the disputed books. We 
may say, then, of Barnabas that it shows far less signs of wide use 
than Clement of Rome's letter does, but we may take it for 
granted that, like Clement's letter, it will here or there have 
been accepted as equal to the books of the New Testament. 
But that can have occurred but rarely. After the fourth century 
it seems gradually to have faded out of the thoughts of the 
Church. 

We now come to a book which secured to itself a host of 
readers and friends. The Shepherd, written by Hermas the 
brother of Pius the bishop of Rome, probably about the year 
140, is a beautiful book of Christian dreams, putting to flight 
every assault of doubt, and urging the faithful to endurance and 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— HERMAS 24 1 

to patience in certain hope of the future glory. The fragment 
of Muratori gives us over seven lines upon this book, and 
furnishes the only account of its origin. It says : " The Shepherd, 
moreover, Hermas wrote but very lately in our times in the city 
of Rome, Pius the bishop his brother being seated in the chair 
of the Roman church, and therefore it should be read, but it 
cannot until the end of time be published (that is : read as if 
it were scripture) in the church before the people, neither among 
the completed number of the prophets nor among the apostles." 
That tells us that two kinds of scripture books were then read in 
the church, prophets and apostles. The " prophets " include Law, 
Prophets, and Books, the whole Old Testament, and the author 
of this list is sure that the list of those books is completed. That 
is an announcement that the Old Testament canon was closed 
for him at least. He does not say that the list of the apostolic 
books has been closed, and the inference from the contrast is 
that it is not yet closed as far as he is concerned. But be that 
as it may, one thing is settled, Hermas may be read as a good 
book, yet it may never to the end of time be accounted a part 
of scripture. That is a strong statement. 

The essay on the Dice-Players, written by we do not know 
whom towards the end of the second century, calls the 
Revelation and Hermas scripture, but does not name the 
words of Jesus and the apostles scripture. Hermas is quoted 
by Irenasus as scripture (4. 20. 2): "Well spoke therefore the 
scripture which says : First of all believe that one is God, He 
that created all things and wrought them out and made all things 
from that which was not, into being." The word "scripture" 
seems there to be used in its proper and full sense. It would be 
possible to suggest that it was a momentary slip of the memory 
on the part of Irenaeus, were it not for the. fact that the words 
stand in a prominent place in Hermas. The words sound 
scriptural enough. If anyone should quote them to-day to a 
good Christian, who was not a Scotchman or a Wiirtemberger 
that knew every verse from Genesis to Revelation, he would be 
very likely for the moment to accept the quotation as a good one, 
and to blame his memory for thinking that it sounded after all a 
little odd. It is also fair to remember that we found Justin 
Martyr mistaking the book in which a quotation was, and here 
Clement does not name Hermas. Immediately afterwards he 
16 



242 THE CANON 

names Malachi. We are led to make all these excuses because 
the case seems so strange. When Eusebius quotes this passage 
from Irenaeus, in giving an account of the literature used by 
Irenaeus, he used himself the word " writing " in the general way, 
not as of scripture. He says (H. E. 5. 8, 7) : " And he not only 
knows but also receives" — that must mean as scripture — "the 
writing of the Shepherd saying : Well spoke, therefore, the scrip- 
ture which says," etc. Enough about the one passage which is 
from a prominent writer, and which assigns to a book not in the 
New Testament the rank of a New Testament book. Clement 
of Alexandria quotes Hermas nine times, but never as scripture. 
He usually refers not to the author, but to the one who has 
spoken to Hermas : " For the power that appeared in the dream 
to Hermas," "The shepherd the angel of repentance, speaks to 
Hermas," " Divinely therefore the power, uttering according to 
revelation the visions to Hermas, says." 

Tertullian, our Carthaginian lawyer, is clear in his mind 
about Hermas. It has often been said that he called Hermas 
" scripture " while he was still a Catholic, but that he condemned 
the book after he had become a Montanist. The fact is, that 
he mentions the book twice, once contemptuously and briefly 
while he was a Catholic, and once at length and violently 
after he had left the Church. He says in his wonderful essay 
on prayer (ch. 16): "For what, then, if that Hermas, whose 
book (writing, scripture) is inscribed something like Shepherd, 
after he had finished praying had not sat down on the bed, 
but had done something else, should we also insist upon it 
that that was to be observed? Not at all." There is nothing 
but contempt in his allusion to " that Hermas " whose book 
was perhaps called Shepherd, perhaps something else. But 
Tertullian had not time then to busy himself with Hermas. The 
time for Hermas came when Tertullian wrote his treatise on 
Modesty. In one place in it (ch. 20, see above at the Epistle 
to the Hebrews) he says, would that that Epistle were more 
common among the churches : "Than that apocryphal Shepherd 
of the adulterers." In another place (ch. 10) he delivers himself 
as follows : " But I should yield to you, if the writing (scripture) of 
the Shepherd, which only loves adulterers, should have been 
worthy to fall into the divine instrument (instrument is testament), 
if it had not been condemned by every council of the churches, 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— HERMAS 243 

even of yours, among the apocryphal and false (books or things), 
an adulteress (the word for writing being feminine) both herself, 
and thence a patroness of her companions, from whom also you 
would initiate others, whom that Shepherd perhaps would defend, 
whom you depict on the cup, himself a prostituter of the Christian 
sacrament, and deservedly the idol of drunkenness and the asylum 
of the adultery about to follow upon the cup, from which thou 
wouldst taste nothing more gladly than the sheep of a second 
penitence. But I draw from the scriptures of that shepherd who 
cannot be broken. This one John (the Baptist) at once offers me 
with the bath and office of penitence, saying : Bring forth fruits 
worthy of repentance." 

That is a rich passage. We learn that the Churches often 
had a shepherd on the communion cup. We learn, what 
we thus far know from no other source, that more than one, 
doubtless several, synods had discussed the question as to the 
admission at least of Hermas, and probably of other books, 
to the number of the New Testament books. And we learn 
that the Shepherd had been strictly and everywhere condemned, 
not only in synods of heretical, of Montanist clergymen, but 
also in regular synods of the Catholic Church. How widely 
spread these synods were does not appear. They may have 
been only in Africa, in the province about Carthage. We should 
expect to hear or to have heard something about them if they 
had also been held in Italy or in eastern Africa. 

Perhaps we should know a little more about what the churches 
in eastern Africa and Palestine thought of Hermas if we had the 
Greek original of Origen's commentary on Romans. The Latin 
translation of the commentary on Rom. 16 14 , where Hermas is 
named, reads : " Yet I think that this Hermas is the writer of 
that little book which is called the Shepherd, which book (writing, 
scripture) seems to me to be extremely useful and, as I think, 
divinely inspired." That seems all very well. But it does not 
sound like Origen, and the translator Rufinus tells Heraclius, to 
whom he wrote on finishing the translation of this commentary, 
what an "immense and inextricable labour had weighed upon 
him " in the translation of this very commentary, in supplying 
what Origen had omitted, which means, in making a good 
orthodox book out of the work of that wild Origen. These words 
are therefore no guide to Origen's view touching Hermas. In 



244 THE CANON 

his commentary on Matthew, while discussing Matt. 19 70 at 
great length, he says : " And if it be necessary venturing to 
bring in a suggestion from a book (writing, scripture) that is 
current in the Church, but not agreed by all to be divine, the 
passage could be drawn from the Shepherd about some who at 
once when they believed were under Michael." He gives the 
passage. But he says at the close : "But I think that this is not 
proper,'' so that he does not seem to have any great opinion of 
Hermas after all. 

Eusebius places it among the spurious books. He names 
as the first of these the Acts of Paul, then the book called 
the Shepherd, and then the Revelation of Peter. It stands in 
the Codex Sinaiticus with Barnabas after the Revelation, and it 
was still copied in Latin Bibles as late as the fifteenth century ; 
it stood in them between Psalms and Proverbs, a strange place 
for a book that was like neither the one nor the other of the two. 
Athanasius, in his letter announcing the date of Easter, the thirty- 
ninth letter, of the year 367, names it at the end with certain non- 
canonical books that are allowed to be read, namely, the Wisdom 
of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the 
Teachings of the Apostle, and the Shepherd. It is the last of all. 
Jerome has been supposed to refer to Hermas in one passage as : 
"That apocryphal book to be condemned of stupidity " ; but as he 
elsewhere quotes it with respect and regards it as a churchly book, 
and as one useful to be read, he probably has in that passage 
some other book in view. 

In the manuscript of the Pauline Epistles named Claro- 
montanus, which is supposed to be of the sixth century, we 
find, before the Epistle to the Hebrews, a Stichometry, a list 
of the books of the New Testament which is very old, probably 
much older than the manuscript itself. In this list we have 
at the close Revelation, Acts, then the Shepherd, and after it 
the Acts of Paul and the Revelation of Peter. Here it is 
placed in contact with the New Testament, yet it takes its 
character also from the two books which follow it. The fact of 
its being in that list at that point can scarcely be considered as 
a certain testimony to the canonicity of Hermas at that time 
and in that place. But though the manuscript was undoubtedly 
written in the West, and though this list is a Latin list, the 
approach to canonicity, or if any one please the canonicity 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— POLYCARP 245 

claimed for it here, is part and parcel of the same thing that we 
saw in the case of Clement of Alexandria. The list appears 
to be of Egyptian origin, although it may be connected with 
Eusebius. It probably dates from the beginning or middle of 
the fourth century. Hermas is supposed to have ceased to be 
used, or to be read in church in the East, where it had happened 
to be so read, in the fourth or fifth century. 

We have already mentioned Polycarp's letter to the church 
at Philippi. It was not singular, when we consider the important 
position held by, and the wide influence exercised by, Polycarp, 
not only in his immediate neighbourhood but also through widely 
distant provinces, that this letter should be highly prized and 
repeatedly read in the churches that secured copies of it. 
Jerome, in speaking of Polycarp, says (de vir. ill. 17) : " He wrote 
to the Philippians an exceedingly useful letter which is read in the 
Church of Asia until to-day." The expression is not definite. 
It points, however, not to Philippi in Macedonia but to Asia. It 
is to be presupposed that at least in Philippi itself, if not in other 
churches in Macedonia, the letter also continued to be read. 
The phrase " in the Church of Asia " cannot be used of a single 
congregation. It means the Church in Asia. Yet it need not 
be supposed that every single church used the letter, and there 
is not the least reason for taking the word Asia in anything more 
than the most general sense. In other words, we do full justice, 
I think, to Jerome's statement if we suppose that a few of the 
churches in western Asia Minor at his day still continued to read 
this letter. It was certainly read as : Man to Man, and not as 
equal to the books of the New Testament. Nothing indicates 
the latter. It stands on the same basis as the letters of Dionysius 
of Corinth. 

One book that now seems to stand very near to the Gospels, 
and again moves further away from them, demands particular 
attention. But we shall scarcely reach any very definite 
conclusion about it. It is like an ignis fatuus in the literature of 
the Church of the first three centuries. We cannot even tell 
from the statements about it precisely who, of the writers who 
refer to it, really saw it. Yes, we are even not sure that it is not 
kaleidoscopic or plural. It may be that several, or at least two, 
different books are referred to, and that even by people who 
fancy that there is but one book, and that they know it. This is 



246 THE CANON 

the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or the Gospel of the 

Hebrews. 

Let us first name the possibilities, say what may have been 
alluded to under this designation. Every reader will at once 
turn in thought to the "previous Gospel" or to the "sayings 
of Jesus " that we have referred to as having probably been 
written by the Twelve -Apostle Matthew and in Hebrew or 
Aramaic. Nothing would be easier than for any or every one who 
saw, read, or heard of that book, either and particularly in its 
original Semitic garb or even in its Greek dress in the form 
under which the writers of our Gospels used it, to call it the 
Gospel to the Hebrews, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or 
the Hebrews' Gospel. The second possibility I must mention, 
although I hold it myself to be an impossibility. For those, and 
there are doubtless still scholars who hold the opinion, who think 
that our Gospel according to Matthew was at first a Hebrew 
book, the name Gospel according to the Hebrews might well 
have attached to it. Not only the language but also the many 
references to the fulfilment of prophecy, the close connection of 
the whole with the Old Testament, would seem to justify the use 
of this title. The third possibility is that this designation has 
nothing to do with our Gospels or with their sources, but that it 
properly attaches to a real Gospel, that is to say, to a full account 
of the words and deeds of Jesus from the beginning of His 
ministry to His death and resurrection, which was written in 
Hebrew or Aramaic. The date of this Gospel may have, almost 
must have, been quite early, seeing that after the composition and 
distribution of copies of our Gospels one would look for a transla- 
tion of one of them rather than for the preparation of a totally 
new Gospel. This third possibility regards the Gospel as one 
from the circles that were in touch with the general Church. 

The fourth possibility passes this line, and regards this Gospel 
as the product of some branch, sect, offshoot from the central 
form of Christianity at that day, as the Gospel of some Ebionitic 
or other Jewish Christian group, for the language limits the search 
to Jewish lines. This Gospel need not then have been at all an 
autochthon gospel, one that arose independently from a root of 
its own upon Palestinian soil. It may have been a revamping 
within still more narrow Jewish limits of what our Gospel 
according to Matthew contains, or its author may have had the 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— GOSPEL TO THE HEBREWS 247 

three synoptic Gospels before him. Yet even in this case it 
would be to be expected that the author or composer should add 
to what he found in writing before him many a trait and many a 
saying attributed justly or of no right to Jesus in the Palestinian 
group to which he himself belonged. A fifth possibility, not a 
probability, would be that some Christian from one of the more 
exclusively Jewish groups had written this Gospel, not in Hebrew 
but in Greek, intending it for the Jews in the Diaspora, and thus 
offering an evangelical parallel to the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
These possibilities will suffice for the moment. It may be added 
here that, as a matter of course, such a Gospel, whatever the 
circumstances of its origin may have been, the moment that it 
presented matter foreign to what our Gospels bring, must have 
been used as a source for interpolations, for the addition of words, 
sentences, sayings, paragraphs to our Gospels. One might almost 
suppose that the readers of our Gospels who knew and read that 
Gospel, either in Aramaic or in a Greek translation, would scarcely 
fail to insert in the synoptic text, or later in the text of the Fourth 
Gospel, all important additions, all that seemed to them worth 
while to record, that the Gospel to the Hebrews contained, and 
therefore that if we should find some day this Gospel, it would 
prove to be almost entirely familiar to us out of our own Gospels 
and their interpolations, the fragments put into them. 

In passing now to the examination of the references to some 
such Hebraic Gospel we must be ready in advance to find 
allusions which cannot with certainty be ascribed to the one or 
the other of the possibilities mentioned. First of all, we must 
recur to Papias, of whom Eusebius says that he has the story 
of a woman, apparently the adulteress of John 7 53 -8 n , 
which the Gospel according to the Hebrews contains. But 
Eusebius does not say, evidently is not sure, that Papias drew it 
from that Gospel. Then we must turn to those words about 
Hegesippus, who as Eusebius tells us brings material " from the 
Gospel according to the Hebrews." Perhaps it was in this 
Gospel that he found the following words, which must have been 
taken from 1 Corinthians 2 9 , which again is based upon Isaiah 
64* : " That the good things prepared for the righteous neither 
eye hath seen nor ear hath heard nor has entered into the heart 
of man." Stephen Gobarus, as quoted by Photius (cod. 232), 
declares that Hegesippus, in the fifth book of his Memoirs, decries 



248 THE CANON 

these words as false, and quotes Matthew 13 16 as right : " Blessed 
are your eyes that see and your ears that hear," etc. But it may 
be that Hegesippus really is combating a heretical application of 
these words. It has also been suggested that they are even not 
taken by Paul from Isaiah, but from an apocrvphal book, and that 
Hegesippus has this apocryphal author in view and not the Gospel 
to the Hebrews. 

In Justin Martyr (Dial. 103) we have a quotation that might 
very well come from this Gospel. He writes of Jesus after the 
baptism : " For also this devil at the time that He came up 
from the river Jordan, the voice having said to Him : Thou art 
my Son, I have begotten Thee to-day, in the Memoirs of the 
apostles is written coming up to Him and tempting Him so far as 
to say to Him : Worship me." Now Justin does not give the 
Memoirs for these words of the voice. .We must observe further 
that it would be very fitting for a Jewish writer to apply these 
words of the Second Psalm to Jesus here at the baptism. And 
we find, oddly enough, that these words have been put into 
the passage in Luke 3 22 in the manuscript of Beza, Codex D, 
which represents the text that was wrought over by many busy 
hands in the second century. And Augustine tells us that some 
manuscripts in his day had these words there in Luke, although 
they were not to be found in the older Greek manuscripts. It 
was said above that this Gospel might have, for example, Ebionitic 
connections ; it is therefore interesting to observe here that 
Epiphanius gives this saying for the voice at the baptism as 
contained in the Ebionitic Gospel according to Matthew. We 
must revert to that again in a moment. 

Justin, referring in another passage (Dial. 88) to the baptism, 
touches another point that may be from this Gospel. He says : 
" When Jesus came down to the water a fire was also kindled in 
the Jordan." Here that Ebionitic Gospel (Epiph. 30. 13) says 
that after Jesus came up from the water, and after the voice had 
spoken : " And at once a great light shone about the place." 
From this difference it would at first not seem possible that 
Justin's source and the Ebionitic Gospel could be the same. 
But when we reflect that Justin is not quoting but telling about 
it, and when we remember how loosely Justin quotes even when 
he does quote, it would appear to be quite possible that he had 
here put a fire for a great light. The general thought remains 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— GOSPEL TO THE HEBREWS 249 

the same. However, the time of the phenomenon is different. 
Justin's story lets the Jordan burn as Jesus enters into it, whereas 
the Ebionitic account assumes that the light is a heavenly 
accompaniment as a confirmation of or corollary to the words of 
the voice. This light also appears in a Latin, an old Latin 
manuscript which may also here stand as a representative of that 
re-wrought text of the second century. 

Justin may have found another saying of Jesus in this Gospel. 
He writes (Dial. 47) : " Wherefore also our Lord Jesus Christ 
said : In what things I take you, in these shall I also judge 
you." That can hardly be, as some have thought, another form 
for John 5 30 : " As I hear, I judge." Clement of Alexandria gives 
the same phrase, only a trifle altered (Quis Dives, 40) : " At what 
I find you, at these also I shall judge," and he does not give an 
author for it. The Sinaitic monk John of the Ladder attributes 
it to Ezekiel. Justin may have it from the Gospel to the 
Hebrews. There is then one other saying of Jesus, also already 
mentioned above in another connection when we spoke of Justin. 
He says in between two quotations from Matthew (Dial. 35) as 
all three spoken by Jesus : "There will be schisms and heresies." 
It is possible that these words simply offer us a combination of 
two of the kinds of error we have found to occur in Justin, loose 
quotation and reference to a wrong book, and that they are only 
a "Justinian" form for 1 Corinthians n 18,19 . But they may 
be from the Gospel to the Hebrews. The Clementine Homilies 
combine these words with the quotation from Matthew which 
follows them in Justin, so that they appear to have used Justin and 
to have confused what Justin kept at least that far apart. Never- 
theless they write : " As the Lord said." 

Eusebius says that the Ebionites use only the Gospel accord- 
ing to the Hebrews, and think that the other Gospels are not 
worth much. The question for us is, whether we should com- 
bine this with what we observed above as to the similarity 
between the text of the Ebionites and the singular passages in 
Justin, or whether we should suppose that Eusebius thought that 
the Ebionites used a Hebrew Gospel that was the equivalent of 
our Greek Matthew. When Eusebius makes his list of the New 
Testament books he gives the accepted books, then the disputed 
ones, then the spurious ones, tacking on the Revelation doubt- 
fully, and finally he adds (H. E. 3. 25) : "But some also reckon 



250 THE CANON 

among these the Gospel according to the Hebrews, in which 
especially the Hebrews who have received Christ take pleasure." 

Epiphanius says (Haer. 30. 13) that the Ebionites use the Gospel 
of Matthew : " not, however, full and complete, but spoiled and 
cut down (mutilated), and they call this the Hebrew [Gospel]." 
Now here again we must ask whether Epiphanius is right in 
thinking that this is Matthew mutilated, or whether the Gospel 
that they used was that shorter Gospel which we suppose Matthew 
to have written, and which was then used in the composition, for 
example, of our Matthew. Of course, it would look like a 
mutilated Matthew although it were precisely, on the contrary, a 
Matthew that had not yet been bolstered out from other sources. 
In another passage (Haer. 30. 3) Epiphanius says : "And they 
also receive the Gospel according to Matthew. For this they 
also, as also those who follow Cerinthus and Merinthus, use alone. 
And they call it : according to the Hebrews, as in truth it is to 
be said, that Matthew alone in the New Testament made a repre- 
sentation and proclamation of the Gospel in Hebrew and in 
Hebrew letters." Now, when Epiphanius speaks of the Nazarenes 
(Haer. 29. 9) he says: "And they have the Gospel according to 
Matthew most complete in Hebrew. For with them clearly this 
is still preserved as it was written from the beginning in Hebrew 
letters. But I do not know whether they have taken away the 
genealogies from Abraham till Christ." The last words show that 
he really knows nothing about this Gospel. It may also be the 
short preliminary Gospel. That only impresses more strongly the 
thought just urged, namely, that Epiphanius may in his ignorance 
have confused reports of the usual Gospel according to Matthew 
with those of the previous preliminary Gospel. 

Clement of Alexandria quotes this Gospel simply with the 
formula " it is written " (2. 9. 45) : " In the Gospel according to 
the Hebrews it is written : He that admires shall rule, and he 
that ruled shall cease." Origen quotes it, for example, thus (on 
John, vol. 2. 12 [6]): "And if anyone approaches the Gospel 
according to the Hebrews, where the Saviour Himself says " ; and 
again he quotes precisely the same passage, saying : " And if 
anyone accepts the words." In his Theophany (4. 13) Eusebius 
quotes a Hebrew Gospel, in discussing the parable of the talents, 
thus : " But the Gospel which has reached us in Hebrew characters 
fastened the threat not upon the one who hid away, but upon the 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— GOSPEL TO THE HEBREWS 25 1 

one who lived luxuriously." That may have been merely a 
Syriac copy of our Gospels, but it may have been the Gospel 
according to the Hebrews in one of its chameleon phases. 
Theodoret's remarks on the Ebionites and this Gospel are clearly 
a poor condensation of what Eusebius says. 

Jerome knew this Gospel well, and translated it into Greek 
and Latin (de vir. ill. 2), and said that Origen often used it. He 
tells us that it was written in the Chaldee and Syrian language, 
but in Hebrew letters, and that it was still used in his day by the 
Nazarenes, and he names it also (adv. Pel. 3. 2) "according to 
the Apostles, or as many think according to Matthew, which also 
is in the library at Caesar ea." The use of Hebrew letters for 
Syriac was nothing strange. The Jews write and print to-day in 
various languages, using Hebrew letters. I have a German New 
Testament printed in Berlin nearly eighty years ago in Hebrew 
letters. Jerome (de vir. ill. 3) seems to have copied this Gospel 
from a manuscript which Nazarenes in Bercea (Aleppo) possessed. 
The vague way in which he speaks of it shows that he did not 
regard it, or at any rate that he was perfectly sure that others 
would not regard it, as apostolic. He says of its authority (adv. 
Pel. 3. 2) : " Which testimonies, if you do not use them for 
authority, use them at least for age (antiquity), what all churchly 
men have thought." Bede, who died in 735, counted it among 
"the churchly histories," because Jerome had used it so often. 
In the list given in the Chronography of Nicephorus it stands as 
the fourth of the four disputed books : Revelation of John, Reve- 
lation of Peter, Barnabas, Gospel according to the Hebrews. 
That is the great Gospel that lies outside of our New Testament. 
We shall doubtless some day receive a copy of it in the original, 
or in a translation. It may have contained much of what 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain, without that fact having been 
brought to our notice in the quotations made from it. For those 
who quoted it did so precisely in order to give that which varied 
from the contents of our four Gospels, or especially of the three 
synoptic ones. 

It will not be necessary to treat at length of other Gospels. 
None of them approaches the importance of the Gospel accord- 
ing to the Hebrews. The Gospel of the Ebionites and that of 
the Nazarenes doubtless were taken by some authors to be the 
same as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and may have 



252 THE CANON 

been closely related to it. It should not be forgotten that, just 
as the text of our Gospels was much re-wrought during the 
second century, so also these Gospels or this Gospel, if the three 
should happen to be one, will surely have been re-wrought. In 
consequence of that it will be possible that differences that 
appear in the form are due to different recensions and not to 
different books. In discussing asceticism Clement of Alexandria 
refers to things supposed to have been said by Jesus to Salome. 
He says (3. g. 6$) : " It stands, I think, in the Gospel according 
to the Egyptians." In another place, writing against the leader 
of the Docetae, Julius Cassianos, who had urged some of the 
Salome passages, he says (3. 13. 93) : " First, then, we have not 
this saying in the four Gospels that have been handed down to us, 
but in that according to the Egyptians." Origen, in the discus- 
sion of the first verse of Luke, says : " The Church has four 
Gospels, the heresies a number, of which one is entitled accord- 
ing to the Egyptians, another according to the twelve apostles. 
Even Basilides dared to write a Gospel, and to put his name in 
the title." Epiphanius writes of Sabellius and his followers 
(Haer. 62. 2): "But they have all their error, and the power 
of their error from some apocrypha, especially from the 
so-called Egyptian Gospel, to which they gave this name." 
None of these references implies an equality of this Gospel to 
our four. 

In the passage on Luke i 1 Origen named not only the two 
given above, but also one according to Mathias. The Latin 
translation speaks also of the Gospel of Thomas before that of 
Mathias, but it may be a later addition. To the Gospel of 
Thomas might be added the name of another of the later 
Gospels, the Gospel of the Infancy, and perhaps, too, that of 
Nicodemus. The Gospel of Nicodemus was in Canterbury, 
chained to a pillar, as late as the time of Erasmus. 

A Gospel or a teaching and acts and a revelation were adorned 
with the name of Peter. Ignatius seems to refer to this when 
he writes to the church at Smyrna (ch. 3) : " And when he came 
to those about Peter, he said to them : Take, touch me and 
see that I am not a bodiless demon. And immediately they 
touched and believed, joined with his flesh and his spirit." 
Serapion, who was ordained bishop of Antioch about 191, is 
said by Jerome to have written a book about the Gospel of 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— GOSPEL OF PETER 253 

Peter and to have addressed it to the church at Rhossus in 
Cilicia, which had turned aside to heresy by reading it (the 
Gospel of Peter). This book was probably a letter. 

Eusebius quotes from it (H. E. 6. 12) as follows : "For we 
brethren also receive Peter and the other apostles as Christ. 
But the books falsely written in their name, we as experienced 
men reject, knowing that we [of old] have not received such. 
For when I was with you, I supposed that ye were all united 
in the right faith. And without reading the Gospel produced 
by them in the name of Peter I said, that if it be this alone 
that seems to afford you modesty (or lowliness of soul), let it 
be read. But now learning from what has been said to me 
that their mind has been cherishing a certain heresy, I shall 
hasten again to be with you. Therefore, brethren, look for 
me soon. . . . For we were able from others of the ascetics to 
borrow this very Gospel, that is, from the successors of those 
who began it, whom we call Docetae (for the most of the 
thoughts are of their teaching), and to read it. And we found 
that much of it was of the right word of the Saviour. But some 
[other] things were added, which also we have noted for you 
below." 

Clement of Alexandria quotes it thus (Strom. 1. 29. 182): 
" And in the Preaching of Peter thou wouldst find the Lord 
proclaiming law and word." Again he writes : " Peter in the 
Preaching says," and : " Therefore Peter says that the Lord 
spoke to the Apostles," and (6. 6. 48) : " At once in the Preach- 
ing of Peter the Lord says to the disciples after the resurrection," 
and (6. 15. 128): "Whence also Peter in the Preaching 
speaking of the apostles says." He quotes a great deal from it, 
and clearly with great respect. Once he writes : " Declares the 
Apostle Paul speaking in agreement with the preaching of Peter," 
but here he may refer to the preaching as by word of mouth. 
Still, he is quoting the book in the neighbourhood of this passage, 
so that the reference to it is more likely. 

Origen speaks of it very differently and very decidedly in 
the preface to his work on Principles : " If, moreover, anyone 
may wish to quote from that book which is called Peter's 
Teaching, where the Saviour seems to say to the disciples : 
I am not a bodiless demon. In the first place, it is to be 
answered to him that that book is not held among the Church 



254 THE CANON 

books, and to be shown that the writing (scripture) itself s 
neither of Peter nor of anyone else who was inspired with the 
Spirit of God." In another place (on Matt. vol. 10. 17), speaking 
of the brothers of Jesus, Origen mentions it merely in passing : 
" Going out from the basis of the Gospel entitled according to 
Peter or of the book of James, they say that the brothers of 
Jesus were sons of Joseph by a previous wife who had lived with 
him before Mary." Gregory of Nazianzus writes in a letter (Ep. 1) 
to his brother Caesarius : " A labouring soul is near God, says 
Peter, somewhere speaking wonderful words." He does not say 
from what book it is taken. The saying is beautiful. The 
Revelation of Peter is mentioned in the Muratorian fragment 
immediately after the Revelation of John. The writer adds of 
the Revelation of Peter: "Which some of us do not wish 
to be read in church." That shows that others did wish 
it to be read in church. Eusebius tells us that Clement of 
Alexandria wrote comments on it in his Sketches, as well as on 
Barnabas. 

Eusebius himself placed it in his list among the spurious 
books, between the Shepherd and Barnabas. In another place 
(H. E. 3. 3) he wrote : " As for the Acts called his [Peter's], 
and the Gospel named after him, and the Preaching said to be 
his, and the so-called Revelation, we know that they are not 
at all handed down among the catholic [writings], because no 
Church writer, neither of the ancients nor of those in our day, 
used proof passages from them." He evidently had forgotten 
or overlooked Clement of Alexandria. Macarius Magnes, pro- 
bably from near Antioch and of the middle of the fourth 
century, gives (4. 6) a quotation from the Revelation thus : 
" And by way of superfluity let that be said which is spoken 
in the Revelation of Peter." But he at once proceeds to show 
that he does not in the least agree with the quotation. 

A spurious Third Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians was long 
preserved, and is now well known, especially from the Armenian 
version of it ; with it the forged letter of the Corinthians to Paul 
is also still in existence. An Epistle to the Laodiceans is found 
in Latin. The oldest copy known is of about the year 546, in the 
Vulgate manuscript written for Victor the Bishop of Capua, and 
now for centuries at Fulda in Germany. It is of no value, but 
it is found in a number of Vulgate manuscripts. 



THE AGE OF ORIGEN— ACTS OF PETER 255 

We may leave these books now. We have seen that the 
letter of Clement of Rome was much read, but we have no 
token that it was read as scripture. Irenseus named Hennas 
in that one passage scripture, and Clement of Alexandria quoted 
the Preaching of Peter in a most respectful way. That is all 
very little. 



256 



V. 

THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS. 

300-370. 

In turning to a new age our problem becomes still more simple. 
We have already disposed of the books that are not in our New 
Testament. We only have the two questions left, touching the 
canonization of the books of the New Testament and touching 
the view held as to the seven disputed books : James, 2 Peter, 
2 and 3 John, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation. 

One man must be mentioned at the outset from whom we 
should probably have received much had he lived to a good age. 
But he did much for the books of the Bible in spite of his 
shortened life. His name was Pamphilus. He was born at 
what is now called Beirut in Syria, the old Berytus. He studied 
at Alexandria under Pierius, and became presbyter at Caesarea 
under the Bishop Agapius. He died as a martyr in the year 309. 
Eusebius was closely united to him, and is called therefore the 
Eusebius of Pamphilus. Eusebius wrote his life. A fragment 
lately discovered has been supposed to refer to a life of him by 
his teacher Pierius, but I am inclined to interpret the words as 
pointing to help given by Pierius to Eusebius in writing the life. 
Pamphilus wrote with Eusebius an Apology for Origen. His 
great merit for us lies in his extraordinary care for the library at 
Caesarea. It is likely that Origen did much to enlarge this 
library, and it may have contained his own books. We still have 
in some Greek manuscripts of the Bible notes, subscriptions, 
telling that they or their ancestors were compared with the 
manuscripts in Pamphilus' library at Caesarea, thus attributing 
to the manuscripts there a certain normative value as carefully 
written and carefully compared with earlier manuscripts. In one 
of the older manuscripts of the Epistles of Paul, which unfortun- 



THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS— EUSEBIUS 257 

ately is but a fragment, we read: "I wrote and set out (this 
book) according to the copy in Csesarea of the library of the 
holy Pamphilus." In some manuscripts is added: "written by 
his hand," showing that he himself had shared in the work of 
writing biblical manuscripts. Such subscriptions are found not 
only in Greek, but also in Syrian manuscripts. 

Pamphilus's friend Eusebius is of great weight for us. He 
has already shown his value for the criticism of the Canon in the 
mere preservation of fragments of earlier writers. To him we 
owe a large part of our knowledge of the first three centuries of 
Christianity. But the criticism of the Canon owes him a special 
debt, because much of his Church History is devoted to the 
observation of the way in which the churches and the Christian 
authors had used and valued or not valued the books of the 
New Testament which were of doubtful standing, and the other 
books which had secured for themselves a certain recognition 
and were to be found in manuscripts and in Church use in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the acknowledged books of the 
New Testament. His Church History was written at a mature 
age. He was probably born between 260 and 265, was Bishop 
of Csesarea before 315, and he died probably in 339 or 340. 
He wrote the history apparently in sections, and with revisions 
between the years 305 and 325. We must give his statements 
in full. They are the chief discussions of the Canon in the 
early Church. 

In the third book of his Church History, Eusebius tells first 
where the various apostles preached, drawing from Origen, then 
he mentions Linus as in charge of the church at Rome after 
the martyrdom of Paul and Peter, and takes up the Epistles of 
the Apostles (H. E. 3. 3): " One Epistle then of Peter, the one 
called his former [Epistle], is acknowledged. And this the 
presbyters of old have used often in their writings as undisputed. 
But the second one that is current as his, we have received not 
to be testament-ed (a part of the testament, canonical we should 
say to-day). Nevertheless, having appeared useful to many, it 
has been much studied with the other writings (books, scriptures). 
But the book of the Acts called his and the Gospel named after 
him, and the so-called Preaching and the so-called Revelation, 
we know are not in the least handed down among the Catholic 
(books, or among the Catholic churches), because no Church 
17 



258 THE CANON 

writer either of the ancients or of those in our day has used 
proof passages from them. And as the history goes on I shall 
make a point of calling attention along with the lines of succession 
[of the bishops] to such of the Church writers at each period as 
have used which (any) of the disputed books, and both to what 
is said by them about the testament-ed and acknowledged 
writings, and to as many things as are said about those that are 
not such (are not acknowledged). But those named of Peter 
are so many, of which I know only one Epistle as genuine and 
acknowledged by the presbyters of old. And of Paul the 
fourteen [Epistles] are open to sight and clear. 

It is not just to ignore the fact that, however, some set aside 
the [Epistle] to the Hebrews, saying that it is disputed in the church 
of the Romans as not being Paul's. And I shall chronicle at the 
proper time what has been said about this by those who were be- 
fore us. Nor have I received the Acts said to be his among the 
undisputed [books]. And since the same apostle in the greetings 
at the end of the Epistle to the Romans makes mention with the 
others also of Hermas, of whom they say there is the Book of 
the Shepherd, it must be known that this too is disputed by 
some, on account of whom it could not be placed among the 
acknowledged books, but by others it is judged to be most 
necessary for those who have especial need of an elementary 
introduction [to the faith]. Whence also we know that it is also 
read publicly in churches, and I have observed that some of the 
oldest writers have quoted it. So much may be said to give an 
idea both of the divine writings that are not spoken against, and 
of those that are not acknowledged by all." 

Twenty chapters later, after bringing from Clement of Alex- 
andria a delightful account of John's reclaiming a robber, he 
again takes up the question of Church books by alluding to those 
of John (H. E. 3. 24 and 25) : " And now also let us make a note 
of the writings of this apostle that are not spoken against. And 
indeed, first of all let the Gospel according to him be acknow- 
ledged by the churches under Heaven. That verily with good 
reason at the hands of the ancients it was placed in the fourth 
division of the other three, in this would be clear. The divine and 
truly godworthy men, I speak of the apostles of Christ, cleansed 
thoroughly in their life, adorned with every virtue in their souls, 
untaught in tongue, but full of courage in the divine and incredible 



THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS— EUSEBIUS 259 

power bestowed upon them by the Saviour, on the one hand 
neither knew how nor tried to make known the lessons of the 
teacher by skill and by rhetorical art, but using alone that which 
the Divine Spirit working with them set forth, and the miracle- 
working power of Christ brought to an end through them, pro- 
claimed the knowledge of the Kingdom of the Heavens to all 
the inhabited world, giving little thought to the study of the way 
in which they should write it down. And this they did as being 
fully devoted to a service that was very great and beyond man." 

" Paul then, who was the most mighty of all in array of words 
and most able in thoughts, did not put in writing more than the 
very short letters, although he had thousands of things and un- 
speakable to say, having attained unto the visions as far as the third 
Heaven and having been caught up in the divine paradise itself, 
and been held worthy to hear the unspeakable words there. There- 
fore also the remaining pupils of the Lord were not without ex- 
perience of the same things, the twelve apostles and the seventy 
disciples and ten thousand besides these. Nevertheless, then, out 
of all Matthew and John alone have left us memoirs (notes) of 
the teachings of the Lord, who also are said to have been forced 
to come to their writing. For Matthew having formerly preached 
to Hebrews, as he was about to go also to others, putting in 
writing in his mother tongue the Gospel according to him, filled 
up by the book the void of his presence to these from whom he 
was sent. And Mark and Luke having published (made the 
edition) of the Gospels according to them, John they say having 
used the whole time an unwritten preaching, finally also came to 
the writing for the following reason." 

Then Eusebius shows how the other three had left out the 
due beginning of the Gospel, what Jesus did before John the 
Baptist was cast into prison, and that John had to supply this 
in his Gospel. He also tells how Luke had reached a certain 
independence of judgment for his Gospel by his intercourse with 
Paul and others. Eusebius then takes up John again : " And of 
the writings of John, besides the Gospel also the former of the 
Epistles is acknowledged as undisputed both by the men of to-day 
and by those still ancient. But the other two are disputed. But 
the opinion as to the Revelation is still now drawn by the most 
toward each side (that is : for and against). Nevertheless this 
also shall receive a decision at a fit time from the testimony of the 



2<5o THE CANON 

ancients. Being at this point, it is fitting that we should sum up 
the writings of the New Testament that have been mentioned." 

[I] " And we must set first of all the holy four of the Gospels, 
which the writing of the Acts of 'the Apostles follows. And after 
this we must name the Epistles of Paul, and in connection with 
them we must confirm the current First Epistle of John and likewise 
the Epistle of Peter. In addition to these is to be placed, if that 
appear perhaps just, the Revelation of John, about which we shall 
in due time set forth what has been thought. And these are 
among the acknowledged books." 

[II] " And of the disputed books, but known then nevertheless 
to many, the Epistle of James is current and that of Jude, and the 
Second Epistle of Peter and the Second and Third named for John, 
whether they happen to be of the Evangelist or of another of the 
same name with him. Among the spurious [books] is the book of 
the Acts of Paul to be ranged, and the so-called Shepherd, and 
the Revelation of Peter, and besides these the current Epistle of 
Barnabas and the so-called Teachings of the Apostles. And 
further still, as I said, the Revelation of John, if it seem good, 
which some as I said set aside, and others reckon among the 
acknowledged [books]. And even among these [I do not think 
this means among the " acknowledged " but among the " spurious " 
books], some have counted the Gospel according to the Hebrews, 
in which especially the Hebrews who have received Christ take 
pleasure. And these would then be all of the disputed books 
(Eusebius here brings the disputed and the spurious together as 
"disputed"). But of necessity, nevertheless, we have made the 
catalogue of these, distinguishing both the writings that are true 
according to the Church tradition and not forged and acknow- 
ledged, and the others aside from these, not testament- ed but 
also disputed, yet known by most of the Church [officials ?], that 
we may be able to distinguish these very books, and " 

[III] "those brought forward by the heretics in the name of 
the apostles, containing either Gospels, as of Peter and Thomas 
and Mathias, or also of some others beside these, or Acts, as of 
Andrew and John and the other apostles, which no man of the 
Church [writers] according to the succession ever held worthy to 
bring forward for memory in any way in a book. And further, in 
a way also the character of the language which is different from 
the apostolic habit, and both the opinion and the aim of what is 



THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS— EUSEBIUS 26l 

brought in them which are as widely as possible from agreeing 
with true orthodoxy, clearly place before our eyes that they are 
forgeries of heretical men. Hence they are not even to be 
ranged among the spurious [books], but to be rejected as totally 
absurd and impious." 

The great question for us here is the precise opinion of 
Eusebius as to the seven books for which we are seeking 
witness. He has them all in his list. James and Second Peter, 
and Second and Third John, and Jude are all among the 
disputed books, but in the first part of them, the good part, and 
not among the spurious books of the second part. Hebrews is 
squarely treated as one of Paul's Epistles. The book of 
Revelation is indeed put down among the acknowledged books, 
but it has a doubtful vote attached to it, and it, it alone of all 
the books, appears a second time, and that not in the first but in 
the second, the spurious part of the disputed books. 

As for James, after telling of his martyrdom he continues 
(H. E. 2. 23) : "Such also is the affair touching James, of whom 
the first of the Epistles that are named Catholic is said to be. It 
must be understood that it is regarded as spurious — not many 
then of the ancients mentioned it, as also not the so-called [Epistle] 
of Jude, it also being one of the seven called Catholic, — yet we 
know that these also are read publicly with the others in very 
many churches." There he says that it is regarded as spurious, 
which, however, is not the case in the list, which stands at a later 
point in his history. If we turn to his other works we find that 
Eusebius does not hesitate to quote James, calling him " the holy 
apostle," or the words themselves "scripture." I know of no 
quotations from Second Peter, Second and Third John, and Jude. 
Hebrews, as we have seen, is fully accepted, and that as Paul's, even 
though in one place in speaking of Clement of Alexandria's Carpets, 
and observing that he quotes from the disputed books, he names as 
such the Wisdom of Solomon, and that of Jesus Sirach, Hebrews, 
Barnabas, Clement [of Rome], and Jude. It is, by the way, 
interesting that he here calls Clement of Rome disputed, although 
he does not give it any place at all in that exact list which we 
have just read over. 

As for Hebrews there, one might almost think it was a 
momentary slip. At any rate, Eusebius quotes it often, and as 
Paul's : " The apostle says," " the wonderful apostle." Paul had 



262 THE CANON 

written it, Eusebius thought, in Hebrew, and perhaps Luke, but 
more likely Clement of Rome had translated it into Greek. The 
book of Revelation evidently remained for him an object of 
suspicion. The swaying hither and thither in his list showed that 
his opinion was also "drawn towards each side," now for now 
against the authority of this book. In one place (H. E. 3. 39) he 
writes, speaking of the report that two graves of John were said to 
be known at Ephesus : " To which it is necessary to give heed. 
For it is likely that the second, unless anyone should wish the 
first, saw the Revelation which is current in the name of John." 
Curious it is that he even thrusts in as a parenthesis the choice 
again of the apostle. He really in this case either did not know 
his mind or had a dislike to stating too bluntly an opinion which 
he knew that many would not like. The fact that he quotes it 
less frequently than might have been expected looks as if he were 
not inclined personally to accept it, and the same conclusion 
follows from his form of quotation. We find for it not "the 
wonderful apostle," but merely "the Revelation of John," or 
"John." Eusebius then, in the first great list of books that we 
have, gives us our New Testament of to-day, but with verbal 
doubts as to the disputed book James that are pretty much 
invalidated by his quoting it as if thoroughly genuine, — with no 
verbal or quoting lessening of the disputed character of Second 
Peter, or of Second and Third John, — with a slight confirmation 
of the disputed character of Jude, — with a practical acceptance 
of Hebrews by most reverent quoting of it, — and with a hesitat- 
ing use of Revelation which agrees better with its being disputed 
than with its being genuine, and which agrees with the tentative 
assigning of it to the presbyter instead of to the Apostle John. 

The Council of Nice in 325 does not appear to have 
determined anything about scripture. It is true that Jerome 
states that it "is said to have accounted Judith in the number 
of the sacred scriptures," but he only gives hearsay for his 
statement, and it may have been a misconception that led to the 
supposition. During the discussions the scriptures served as 
the armoury and munition store for all the members of the 
council. Of the seven disputed books, only Hebrews seems to have 
been quoted, and that as Paul's, in an answer of the bishops, to 
a philosopher, by Eusebius (Migne, P. G. 85. 1276 A) : "As says 
also Paul the vessel of choice, writing to Hebrews," and he 



THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS— EUSEBIUS 263 

quotes Hebrews 4 12 - 13 . Hebrews is quoted not rarely in the Acts 
of this council. The only other reference that might touch the 
disputed books" is the naming of the "Catholics," meaning the 
Catholic Epistles: "And in the Catholics John the evangelist 
cries," and Leontius, the bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, who 
is speaking, quotes (MPG 85. 1285) 1 John 5 6 . A chapter or 
two later (MPG 85. 1297 C) he writes: "For he who has not 
the Son, as it says in the Catholics, neither hath he the 
Father." That is a very loose way of rendering : " Every one 
who denieth the Son, neither hath he the Father," 1 John 2 28 . 
But this reference to the " Catholics " does not at all say surely 
that all seven Catholic Epistles are in the collection. It is quite 
likely that they are all in Leontius' hand and heart. Nevertheless 
it would be possible for a man to speak in this way who only 
had two Catholic Epistles, First Peter and First John. Moreover, 
at a time at which the opinions about these seven books were 
still somewhat uncertain, it would be perfectly possible for some 
one member of the council to quote a book that some other 
members would not have quoted, just as one might of set purpose 
not quote a book that others would have quoted. But the ' 
council, as far as we can see, did not think of settling what books 
belonged to the New Testament and what did not. It had other 
work to do. 

A few years later Constantine the emperor commanded 
Eusebius to have fifty Bibles copied for him, of which we shall 
speak when we come to the Criticism of the Text. He had not 
probably any thought of a canonical determination of a series 
of books. He merely wished to have some handsome and 
appropriate presents for a few large churches. We have to-day 
parts of two manuscripts of the Bible that may perhaps have been 
among those fifty. However that may be, they were probably 
written about that time. One of them is the Codex Sinaiticus, 
of which the New Testament part is at Saint Petersburg, although 
forty-three leaves out of it, containing fragments of the Old 
Testament, are at Leipzig. This manuscript contains the four 
Gospels, fourteen Epistles of Paul — because Hebrews is placed as 
a Pauline Epistle between Thessalonians and Timothy, — the book 
of Acts, the seven Catholic Epistles, Revelation, Barnabas, and a 
fragment of the Shepherd. Therefore we find in it all the books 
of our New Testament, and in addition Barnabas and Hermas. 



264 THE CANON 

It is even not impossible that some other books were originally 
in it after Hermas. As observed above, Barnabas would probably 
have been placed before Revelation had the one who caused it 
to be copied intended to have it regarded as a part of the New 
Testament. And Hermas, although of a somewhat dreamy, 
apocalyptic nature, would probably also have been placed before 
Revelation. I suppose that these two books were added because 
they were often read in church as from : " Man to Man," and 
because it was convenient to have them thus at hand. We must 
return to this under Text. The other manuscript is the Vatican 
manuscript at Rome. It contains in the New Testament the 
four Gospels, the book of Acts, the seven Catholic Epistles, the 
Pauline Epistles as far as Thessalonians, and Hebrews to 9 14 , 
where it unfortunately breaks off. Of course, it originally had 
the pastoral Epistles after Hebrews, and it doubtless contained 
also Revelation. Whether other books were in it or not we 
cannot tell. 

Cyril of Jerusalem, who was born in 315 and died in the 
year 386, probably wrote his Catechetical Lectures about the 
year 346. In them he naturally enough speaks of the divine 
scriptures. The passage (4. 33-36) shows us at the same time 
how he treated his hearers and readers, what tone he struck in 
trying to fit their ears : " Learn then with love of wisdom also 
from the Church what are the books of the Old Testament and 
what of the New. The apostles and the ancient bishops were 
much more prudent and better filled with foresight than the leaders 
of the Church who handed these scriptures down to us. Thou 
then, child, do not treat falsely the determinations of the Church. 
And of the Old Testament, as is said, study the twenty-two books, 
which if thou are diligent to learn hasten to store up in memory 
as I name them to you." Then he gives the books of the Old 
Testament. "And of the New Testament the four Gospels 
alone. And the rest are forged and hurtful. The Manichaeans 
also wrote a Gospel according to Thomas which by the fine sound 
of the gospel name attached to it corrupts the souls of the more 
simple. And receive also the Acts of the Twelve Apostles. 
And in addition to these also the seven Catholic Epistles of 
James and Peter, John and Jude. And the seal upon all, 
and the last thing of disciples the fourteen Epistles of Paul. 
And the rest let them all lie in a second place. And as 



THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS— CYRIL OF JERUSALEM 265 

many as are not read in churches, these neither read thou by 
thyself as thou hast heard." The books that are not part of the 
New Testament, but which may be read, are not named. The 
book of Revelation is not one of the books of the New 
Testament. That is the state of things at Jerusalem just before 
the middle of the fourth century. 

Up to this time, that is to say until well into the fourth 
century, we have found no signs of a determination of a list of 
the books of the New Testament by any gathering of Christians. 
Marcion did make a list. But he was a single person and a 
heretic. The nearest that we have come to it was Tertullian's 
declaration that every council of the churches had judged the 
Shepherd to be among the apocryphal and false books. That 
looks as if these councils must have, or at least might have, at 
the same time made a definite statement as to what was not 
apocryphal and false, but in fact authoritative, public, and 
genuine. But this conclusion is by no means necessary. For 
the condemnation of the Shepherd may well have been uttered 
in connection with special doctrinal or disciplinary determinations, 
and have had nothing to do with the question of what books 
belonged in general to the New Testament. At the first glance 
it looks as if we were now to have at last a decision of a council. 
The council of apparently the year 363 held at Laodicea in 
Phrygia Pacatania, is sometimes urged as the first council that 
made a list, published a list, of the books which properly belong 
to the New Testament. 

The name Council of Laodicea sounds very well, and the 
untutored reader might imagine to himself an imposing array 
of bishops, perhaps as many as the three hundred and eighteen 
of the Council of Nice. Far from it. There were, we are 
told, only thirty-two members of this council, and another 
reading says only twenty-four. It can only have been a local 
gathering, and in spite of the authority of the bishops in the 
fourth century I should not be surprised if among the thirty-two 
there had been some presbyters. It would seem likely that this 
little council or synod was summoned to meet by a bishop of 
Philadelphia named Theodosius, and that Theodosius had the 
most to do with the determining the canons of the council. Fie 
called the council then, and swayed it. He is said to have been 
an Arian, but that was of no particular moment for the Questions 



266 THE CANON 

of order which were laid, and of course laid by him, before the 
synod for decision. 

The canon which interests us is the very last one, the 
fifty-ninth. It begins thus : " That psalms written by private 
persons must not be read in the church, nor uncanonized 
books, but only the canonized ones of the New and Old 
Testament." Thus far the canon is found in all accounts of the 
council with but trifling variations. Of course, the "reading" of 
a psalm might be the "singing" of the psalm. Such psalms are 
not to be uttered in church. That is a decision akin to the old- 
time rules of some Presbyterian Churches that nothing but the 
psalms of the Old Testament should be sung in church. The 
words uncanonized and canonized as applied to books remind us 
of the word " testament-ed " that we have already sometimes met. 
Now thus far we have no list of the books. But in some sources 
for this canon it goes on : " How many books are to be read : 
of Old Testament: i. Genesis of world. 2. Exodus from Egypt. 
3. Leviticus. 4. Numbers. 5. Deuteronomy. 6. Jesus of Nave. 
7. Judges, Ruth. 8. Esther. 9. First and Second Kings. 10. 
Third and Fourth of Kings. 11. Chronicles, First and Second. 
12. Ezra, First and Second. 13. Book of hundred and fifty 
Psalms. 14. Proverbs of Solomon. 15. Ecclesiastes. 16. Song 
of Songs. 17. Job. 18. Twelve Prophets. 19. Isaiah. 20. 
Jeremiah and Baruch, Lamentations and Epistles. 21. Ezekiel. 
22. Daniel. And those of the New Testament : Gospels four: 
according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, 
according to John. Acts of Apostles. Catholic Epistles seven, 
thus : of James one ; of Peter, First, Second ; of John, First 
Second, Third ; of Jude one. Epistles of Paul fourteen : to 
Romans one ; to Corinthians, First, Second ; to Galatians one ; 
to Ephesians one ; to Philippians one ; to Colossians one ; to 
Thessalonians, First, Second ; to Hebrews one ; to Timothy, First, 
Second ; to Titus one, to Philemon one." 

There we have a fair catalogue. All of the books of our New 
Testament are in it save Revelation. If the Synod of Laodicea, 
the thirty-two men, settled upon that list, it would be no great 
thing, but it would be a little beginning of a fixed, a settled, a 
decreed Canon. Unfortunately, when we examine the various 
gourceg we must decide that this list was not a part of the canon 
ipf laodicea. It was not very strange that the list should be added. 



THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS— LAODICEA, ATHANASIUS 267 

This was the last canon. We might almost suppose that the man 
who first added the books did not dream of really making his 
catalogue a part of the fifty-ninth canon. He may have said to 
himself, considering the canon: "What must we read then? 
Let me see. In the Old Testament there are these. In the 
New Testament these." And writing them down there, the next 
scribe who came to copy a manuscript from that one, again 
thought no harm, thought innocently enough that all that really 
belonged to the fifty-ninth canon, and copied it accordingly. We 
are therefore still without a canon approved by a synod or a council. 
But we can have almost at once a proclamation of a list that 
is so very public, so very authoritative that it may for the time 
replace a synod which we cannot yet get. 

It was the habit of the Bishop of Alexandria to announce 
the day on which Easter would fall by an Epistle. In the year 
367, as it appears, Athanasius of Alexandria wrote his 39th 
Festal Epistle, and gave a list of the books of the Bible. 
" But since we have referred to the heretics as dead, and to us as 
having the divine scriptures unto salvation, and as I fear, as 
Paul wrote to the Corinthians, lest some few of the simp'e 
may be led astray by deceit from simplicity and purity by 
the wiles of men, and finally may begin to read the so-called 
apocrypha, deceived by the likeness of the names to those of 
the true books, I beg you to have patience if in alluding to 
these things I write also about things that you understand, be- 
cause of necessity and of what is useful for the Church. And 
now about to recall these" — the scriptures — "I shall use as a 
prop for my boldness the example (another reading is : the 
passage, the verse) of the evangelist Luke, saying also myself: 
Since some have turned their hand to draw up for themselves 
the so-called apocrypha, and to mingle these with the inspired 
writ, concerning which we are informed fully, as those handed it 
down to the fathers who were from the beginning directly seers 
and servants of the word, it seemed good also to me, urged by 
true brethren, and having learned from time gone by, to set forth 
in order from the first the books that are canonized and handed 
down and believed to be divine, so that each, if he has been 
deceived, may detect those who have misled him, and the one 
remaining pure may rejoice at being put in mind of it again. So 
then the books of the Old Testament are in number all told 



268 THE CANON 

twenty-two. For so many, as I heard, it is handed down that 
there are letters, those among the Hebrews. And in order and 
by name each is thus : first Genesis, then Exodus, then Leviticus, 
and after this, Numbers, and finally, Deuteronomy. And follow- 
ing on these is Jesus, the son of Nave and Judges, and after this 
Ruth, and again following four books of Kings, and of these the 
first and second are counted in one book and the second and 
third likewise in one, and after these First and Second Chronicles, 
likewise counted in one book, then First and Second Ezra, likewise 
in one, and after these the book of Psalms and following Proverbs, 
then Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. In addition to these is 
also Job and finally Prophets, the Twelve counted in one book. 
Then Isaiah, Jeremiah, and with him Baruch, Lamentations, 
Epistle, and after him Ezekiel, and Daniel. As far as these 
stand the books of the Old Testament." 

" And those of the New we must not hesitate to say. For 
they are these : Four Gospels, according to Matthew, accord- 
ing to Mark, according to Luke, according to John. Then 
after these Acts of Apostles and so-called Catholic Epistles 
of the apostles seven thus : Of James one, but of Peter two, 
then of John three, and after these of Jude one. In addition 
to these there are of Paul fourteen Epistles, in the order written 
thus : first to the Romans, then to the Corinthians two, then also 
after these to the Galatians, and following to the Ephesians, then 
to the Philippians, and to the Colossians, and to the Thes- 
salonians two. And the Epistle to the Hebrews, and following 
to Timothy two, and to Titus one. And again John's Revela- 
tion. These are the wells of salvation, so that he who thirsts 
may be satisfied with the sayings in these. In these alone is the 
teaching of godliness heralded. Let no one add to these. Let 
nothing be taken away from these. And about these the Lord 
shamed the Sadducees, saying : Ye err, not knowing the scrip- 
tures or their powers. And he admonished the Jews : Search 
the scriptures, for it is they that testify of Me. But for greater 
exactness I add also the following, writing of necessity, that 
there are also other books besides these, not canonized, yet 
set by the Fathers to be read to (or by) those who have just 
come up and who wish to be informed as to the word of 
godliness : the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, 
and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit, and the so-called Teaching 



THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS— ATHANASIUS 269 

of the Apostles, and the Shepherd. And nevertheless, beloved, 
those that are canonized and these that are to be read [are 
recommended to us, but] there is nowhere any mention of the 
apocryphal books. But they are an invention of heretics, writing 
them when they please, and adding grace to them and adding 
years to them, so that bringing them out as old books they may 
have a means of deceiving the simple by them." 

The point of Athanasius' recounting the books of the Bible 
is seen at the beginning and at the end. He is not in any 
way trying to block off what Eusebius had published in his 
Church History. He has the heretics and their writings in view 
who concocted these books, as Athanasius thinks, to catch the 
souls of simple Christians. The word " simple " is one of those 
nice words which in debate can always be applied to the people 
who do not think as you do. Tertullian was not a simple man, 
an unlearned man easily to be led astray by any chance wind of 
doctrine, but he became a heretic. And what shall we say of 
the great Origen ? But no matter. Athanasius wishes to protect 
the simple from the snares of the heretics. The heretics write 
apocryphal books. He tells us what is "inspired scripture." 
With this list in his hand the simple man can at once settle 
the dispute with the heretic in favour of orthodoxy. We find 
in the list our whole New Testament. 

The notable advance upon Eusebius is, that now not a 
single one of these books remains as a disputed book. They 
are all on one level. Now that may be merely the Alex- 
andrian view of the case. In Cassarea doubts may still prevail, 
or in other churches. But for Alexandria the case is clear. 
Clear as a bell is it also that Athanasius does not lay claim 
to a decision of any general council for the canonizing of 
these books. It would be possible, but it would not be likely, 
that he should know of the decision of some small council in 
favour of his books, of the books which he regarded as the true 
ones, and yet not mention it. This consideration makes it all 
the less likely that the Council of Laodicea had four years earlier 
put forth the list that we looked at a few moments ago. Athanasius 
accepts the Epistle to the Hebrews as Paul's. It seems almost 
curious that a great bishop should for the moment leave the 
preaching, the proclamation of the Gospel by word of mouth, the 
living and breathing side of Christianity, so far out of sight. It is 



270 THE CANON 

the heretics that force him to it. Do the orthodox preach, so do 
the heretics. But these divine books, they are something that 
heresy cannot touch. Their imitation scriptures are of no avail. 
These now called canonized books are the wells of salvation. 
And now the process of choosing books has come to an end. 

Perhaps Athanasius thinks of the words at the close of the 
Revelation. He knows that the New Testament is full and 
complete. No one may add anything to these books. Nothing 
is to be taken away from them. And then he proceeds to add 
something to them, but on a lower plane as second-class books. 
Look at them : the Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Sirach — 
which is by the way an exceedingly worthy book — Esther, Judith, 
Tobit, the Teaching of the Apostles — which may be one of two 
or three different books — and the beautiful dreams of the 
Shepherd of Hermas. Strange, however, it is that a bishop 
should say that this medley of books : Esther, Judith, Tobit 
among them, should be especially commended to be read to or 
by the new-comers. One would think that the new Christians 
would need before all others the pure milk of the word. Yet this 
part of the letter of Athanasius has a moral for us touching the 
earlier times. Just such a statement as to second class books, 
reaching back as far as Sirach, justifies my contention that the 
Christians, like the Jews, have been reading all along in church, 
as in the synagogue, books that were : Man to Man, not : God to 
Man. 

What books have now fallen away as compared with 
Eusebius ? Turning to the spurious books of Eusebius, we miss 
the Acts of Paul, the Revelation of Peter and Barnabas. The 
letter of Clement, a letter scarcely inferior to some of the Epistles 
of the New Testament, and fully equal to, or rather far above, the 
Shepherd has fallen on all hands completely out of sight. How 
is it that Athanasius has reached this point? Has there been 
since Eusebius, and before Athanasius, any great discovery made 
of new sources from the first or second century throwing a flood 
of light upon the whole literature of the Christians, and enabling 
Athanasius to say that all the Catholic Epistles are genuine, and 
that Revelation is genuine, and that the other books are very bad 
indeed ? Not at all. It is even quite possible that Athanasius 
would have written just thus if he had published this letter in the 
same year in which Eusebius published his Church History — 



THE AGE OF EUSEBIUS— ATHANASIUS 27 1 

only that he was not then bishop. Alexandria was not far from 
Csesarea, and had been of old tied to it by many a bond. But 
there had also been fierce battles between the two places, and 
Alexandria had its own opinions, both in doctrine and in letters. 
Nor must we forget that Alexandria, even through and in those 
battles, had itself changed. That shows itself in Athanasius's list 
in the total omission of Barnabas, which had once been so much 
liked at Alexandria. 

Twenty years ago Theodor Mommsen found a singular canon 
in a Latin manuscript of the tenth century. It probably belongs 
to an earlier date than Athanasius, but I let it stand here by 
way of comparison. It appears to be from Africa. In the Old 
Testament it counts the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of 
Sirach among the books of Solomon, and it has Esther, Judith, 
and Tobit, so that in that far it has a likeness to our Athanasius 
list, though the latter put those books in an appendix. It differs 
from Athanasius in adding Maccabees. In the New Testament 
it goes its own way, and an odd way it is. Hebrews is altogether 
lacking. Paul's Epistles number only thirteen. But the Catholic 
Epistles appear in the following form, save that I omit the 
number of the lines : the three Epistles of John, one only, the two 
Epistles of Peter, one only. Those are in the manuscript in four 
lines, in a column, divided by commas here. What does it 
mean ? Of course, if we were positively determined to get from 
this catalogue the seven usual Catholic Epistles we should say 
that James was meant by the " one only " after John, and Jude 
by the "one only" after Peter. That would indeed be an 
extremely mild way of putting the scriptural character of James 
and Jude before a reader. No other instance like it occurs in 
the list. 

The words look like the expression of two opinions in 
the list, for it is totally impossible to imagine that the scribe 
copying the list found a double mutilation, one for James and 
one for Jude, each before "one only" and each without the 
number of verses after "one only," and that he had no idea 
of what two Epistles might belong there, and therefore left them 
nameless. So ignorant a scribe among Christians is not to be 
thought of. The scribe may have found the names of James 
and Jude in the list, seeing that three Epistles of John and two 
of Peter are there. But if he found them there he left them out 



272 THE CANON 

because he did not think they belonged there. He found then 
three Epistles of John, with the number of verses in them. He 
did not, however, believe at all that there should be three Epistles 
of John. He thought that only First John was scripture. Why 
did he then write "three Epistles," why did he not write "one 
Epistle" and be done with it? The reason lay in the number of 
the verses. He had the number for the three Epistles together, 
and he could not tell precisely how many were to be subtracted 
if he left out Second and Third John. Therefore he wrote the 
three Epistles of John, and added the number of the lines. But 
in order to save his conscience from the stain of calling Second 
and Third John biblical he added "one only." The case was 
then probably the same with the two Epistles of Peter. He only 
acknowledged First Peter, and could not separate its lines or 
verses from those of Second Peter. And thus he again wrote 
two Epistles of Peter with their verses, and doggedly added there 
below : " one only." We do not know, but it looks like that. 
Now we see in what way this list has a certain claim to a place 
at this point. It appears to give us a glimpse of a little skirmish 
in the war of canonical opinions. The scribe had, it seems, 
before him a manuscript which even may have had Hebrews in 
it as a fourteenth Epistle of Paul, but which at anyrate had three 
Epistles for John and two for Peter, and therefore probably 
James and Jude as well. He is himself one of the strict old 
school, and, if there were fourteen Epistles for Paul before him, 
he took his pen and wrote thirteen, he dropped James and Jude, 
and he only granted John and Peter one Epistle each. 

What will the future bring? Will Eusebius' full list and 
that of Athanasius now have full sway ? Will a general council 
settle the books of scripture ? Will all doubt and all difference 
cease ? 



273 



VI. 

THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA. 

370-700. 

The circle seems to be closing. We have a pair of full catalogues 
of the New Testament books in our hands, one with a few doubts 
clinging to it, one quite definite and sure. Now we must advance 
through the years and ask what the writers and what the Churches 
do in this matter. Whether they accept the full lists or whether 
they demur ; we must have their vote, if we can find out what it is. 
And we must look for a decision of a general council, settling 
the matter for all Christendom. 

Divisions overlap. We cannot cut up the lives of the authors 
according to our divisions, arbitrary divisions. The first writer 
whom we have to take up is Gregory of Nazianzus. The son 
of a Bishop Gregory of Nazianzus, he studied at Caesarea in 
Cappadocia, at Caesarea in Palestine, at Alexandria, perhaps ten 
years at Athens, was once for an instant Bishop of Sasima, and 
again for an instant Bishop of Constantinople as elected by the 
general council of the year 381, and died in 389 or 390, having 
been one of the very first rank as a Christian poet, orator, and 
theologian. His opinion of scripture he uttered in a poem 
(1. 1. 12). After the Old Testament he goes on : "And now count 
[the books] of the New Mystery. Matthew wrote to the Hebrews 
the wonders of Christ, and Mark to Italy, Luke to Greece, but 
to all John, a great herald, walking in heaven. Then the Acts 
of the wise apostles. And ten of Paul, and also four Epistles. 
And seven Catholic, of which of James one, and two of Peter, 
and three of John again, and Jude's is the seventh. Thou hast 
all. And if there is anything outside of these, it is not among 
the genuine [books]. That recalls to us the list by Cyril of 
Jerusalem. All our books are there again, save the Revelation. 
18 



274 THE CANON 

Gregory may stand for Asia Minor, but we see how wide a basis 
he had in the long years of study in such widely separated cities. 
If we turn to his writings there appear to be no references to 
Second Peter, Second and Third John, and Jude, but he refers 
four times to James, eight or nine times to First Peter, and twice 
to First John. First John he names (Log. 31. 19) : "What now 
John saying in the Catholics [the Catholic Epistles] that : Three 
are those who bear witness, the spirit, the water, the blood." In 
a dozen places Gregory quotes Old Testament passages which 
are given in the Epistle of James and in First Peter, and he pro- 
bably quotes them because they are familiar to him from these 
Epistles, yet I let them pass, in order not to appear to press 
the matter unduly. First Peter 2° would have to be named 
seven times. First Peter and First John are also named here 
because it has been supposed that Gregory did not use them. 
He refers very often to Hebrews. The Revelation he quotes 
once, and in another place he may have taken an Old Testa- 
ment quotation from it. In one place he names it thus (Log. 
42. 9): "As John teaches me by the Revelation." We see 
then that in general Gregory's quotations may be brought into 
harmony with his list, for it is not at all strange that he should 
not happen to refer to Second and Third John, and not very 
strange that he should have passed by Second Peter and its mate 
Jude. Before leaving Gregory of Nazianzus it should be observed 
that his poems fill a large part of his works, and that these are 
not adapted to quotations. 

The great friend of Gregory of Nazianzus was Basil the Great, 
the Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia. We might look for a 
precisely identical use of scripture from these two. Certainly one 
of them will often have used the books belonging to the other. 
As for the seven books that were formerly disputed, Basil quotes 
James twice, and Second Peter once, and the Revelation twice ; 
of the two times, he once points to it as John's (To Eunom. 2. 14) : 
" But the evangelist himself in another book (or another ' word ') 
of such a kind, saying ' was ' showed what was meant : He that is 
and was and the almighty." He is discussing the tense of " was " 
in John i 1 at length. Hebrews he quotes freely. I have not 
noticed any quotations from Second or Third John or Jude. That 
would not be strange, even if he had them in his hands. But it 
is important to emphasise the difference between these two friends 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 275 

in the use of First Peter and First John. Basil uses them often. 
Gregory not often. The difference may be caused in part by 
differences in topics treated, closely as the two were associated 
with each other, not merely personally but also theologically. 
Yet it may well be the case that the difference lies partly in what 
I might term loosely a personal equation. I do not mean, 
however, by that, that one of them would react at the chance 
of a quotation more quickly than the other, but that one of them 
may well have had, not precisely other likes and dislikes, but 
other inclinations towards given books. The application of this 
is that Gregory, although he had these books and accounted 
them scripture, simply did not lean towards them so much as 
Basil did, and therefore quoted them less frequently. The wider 
application is, that we must be cautious in supposing that failure 
to quote a book, however pat its sentences may seem to us to be 
for an author's purpose, denotes that a writer does not know 
of or directly refuses to quote the given book. Basil quotes 
Second Peter once, where he had occasion to quote. The 
occasion or his wish to intensify a preceding quotation might 
easily have been lacking, and we should have heard suggestions 
that he did not approve of this book. 

Basil's brother, Gregory of Nyssa, will certainly have agreed 
with his brother, and with their friend Gregory of Nazianzus in 
the reception of the books of the New Testament. In his writings 
I have not noticed any quotations from James, Second Peter, 
Second and Third John, and Jude (I saw ten from First John 
and twelve from First Peter). Hebrews he uses freely. He 
appears really to quote the Revelation twice. Once he says of 
it (Antirrh. 37) : "As says somewhere the word of the scripture," 
and quotes from Rev. 21 6 or 22 13 , or from a various reading of 
i 8 . In the other case he writes (Address at his ordination) : " I 
heard the evangelist John saying in apocryphal (here probably : 
in lofty words, hard to understand) to such by an enigma, that 
it is necessary with great accuracy always to boil in the spirit, 
but to be cold in sin : For thou shouldst have been, he says, 
cold or hot," Rev. 3 15 . 

Amphilochius, a Cappadocian by birth, a lawyer, and then 
Bishop of Iconium in Lycaonia, wrote several books, but very 
little of what he wrote has reached us. A poem to Seleucus, 
which is sometimes found among the poems of Gregory of 



276 THE CANON 

Nazianzus (2. 7), was probably written by him : " Moreover, it 
much behoves thee to learn this. Not every book is safe which 
has gotten the sacred name of scripture. For there are, there are 
sometimes, books with false names. Some are in the middle 
and neighbours, as one might say, of the words of truth. Others 
are both spurious and very dangerous, like falsely stamped and 
spurious coins, which yet bear the inscription of the king, but 
are not genuine, are made of false stuffs. On account of these 
I shall tell thee each of the inspired books. And so that thou 
mayest learn to distinguish well, I shall tell thee first those of the 
Old Testament. The Pentateuch has the Creation [ = Genesis], 
then Exodus, and Leviticus the middle book, after which 
Numbers, then Deuteronomy. To these add Joshua and the 
Judges. Then Ruth, and four books of Kings, and the double 
team of Chronicles. Next to these First Ezra, and then the 
Second. Following I shall tell thee the five books in verses, of 
Job crowned in strifes of varied sufferings, and the book of 
Psalms, a harmonious remedy for the soul ; and again, three of 
Solomon the Wise, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. 
To these add the twelve prophets, Hosea first, then Amos the 
second, Micah, Joel, Abdiah, and Jonah the type of His three 
days' passion, Nahum after them. Habbakuk, then a ninth 
Sophoniah, both Haggai and Zachariah, and the double named 
angel Malachi (double named because the Septuaginta put the 
translation of Malachi — " angel " — in and let Malachi stay also). 
After them learn the four prophets : the great and bold-speaking 
Isaiah, and Jeremiah the merciful, and the mystical Ezekiel, and 
last Daniel, the same in works and words most wise. To these 
some add Esther. It is time for me to say the New Testament 
books. Receive only four evangelists : Matthew, then Mark, to 
whom add Luke a third, count John in time a fourth, but first in 
height of teachings, for I call this one rightly a son of thunder, 
sounding out most greatly to the Word of God. Receive Luke's 
book, also, the second, that of the general (Catholic) Acts of the 
Apostles. Add following the vessel of election, the herald of the 
Gentiles, the Apostle Paul, who wrote wisely to the Churches 
twice seven Epistles, of Romans one, to which it is necessary 
to join on to the Corinthians two, and that to the Galatians, 
and that to the Ephesians, after which that in Philippi, then the 
one written to the Colossians, two to the Thessalonians, two to 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 277 

Timothy, and to Titus and Philemon, one to each, and to the 
Hebrews one. And some say that the one to the Hebrews is 
spurious, not saying well, for the grace is genuine. However 
that may be, what remains ? Some say we must receive seven 
Catholic Epistles, others three alone, — that of James one, and one 
of Peter, and that of John one. And some receive the three 
(that is of John), and in addition to them the two of Peter, and 
that of Jude a seventh. And again some accept the Revelation 
of John, but the most call it spurious. This would be the most 
reliable (the most unfalsified) canon of the divinely inspired 
scriptures." Here we have a bishop in Asia Minor, a mate of 
the Gregories and of Basil, and yet he appears inclined to reject 
Second Peter, Second and Third John, and Jude, and almost 
certainly rejects Revelation. He himself accepts Hebrews, but 
he knows that others do not. Here we have the word " canon " 
used directly. 

Didymus of Alexandria, who died about the year 395, wrote a 
commentary to all seven of the Catholic Epistles, of which, how- 
ever, only fragments, and that mostly in a Latin translation, have 
been preserved. James he appears to have fully accepted. He 
calls him an apostle of the circumcision like Peter. But he pro- 
duces in the discussion of 2 Peter 3 5-8 , which does not suit him, 
a condemnation of the Epistle which seems to be drawn from 
Eusebius, whom we above quoted (Migne, P. G. 39. 1774): "It 
is therefore not to be overlooked that the present Epistle is 
forged, which, although it is read publicly, is yet not in the 
canon." He quotes James, and he refers to the Revelation 
repeatedly as John's, so that he probably did not suppose that 
another "John," but that the Apostle John, wrote it. Dionysius' 
criticisms do not seem to have been accepted in his own town. 

Epiphanius, the Bishop of Constantia or Salamis on Cyprus, 
who died in the year 403, gives us a somewhat careless list which 
undoubtedly contains all our books, although he does not say 
precisely seven Catholic Epistles. He adds to the New Testa- 
ment thus (Haer. 76) : " Revelation, and in the Wisdoms I say 
both of Solomon and of the son of Sirach, and simply in all 
the divine scriptures." He seems really to account these two 
books as scripture. In his refutation of the heretics whom 
he calls Alogi, he speaks several times of the Revelation as 
from John the Evangelist. 



278 THE CANON 

A council at Carthage in the year 397 decreed a canon about 
the reading in church (Can. 39) : " It is also settled that aside from 
the Canonical Scriptures nothing is to be read in church under the 
name of Divine Scriptures. Moreover, the Divine Scriptures are 
these." Then follow the books of the Old Testament, including 
Tobit, Judith, Esther, and Maccabees, and the books of the New 
Testament. I call attention to the fact that nothing else is to 
be read in Church under the name of scripture, and recall the 
distinction between : God to Man, and : Man to Man. We 
must further observe the use of " canonical." In the records the 
following is attached to this canon : " Let this also be made 
known to our brother and fellow-priest Boniface, or to other 
bishops of those parts, for the sake of confirming this canon, 
because we have received from the fathers that these are to be 
read in Church. It is, moreover, to be allowed that the passions 
of the martyrs be read when their anniversary days are celebrated." 
The reference to Boniface, who did not become Bishop of Rome 
until 418, is probably due to the person who superintended the 
codifying of the canons of a series of the Carthaginian councils, 
possibly in the year 419. The other statement, that the acts 
of the martyrs may be read on their days, confirms what was 
said a moment ago. That was : Man to Man. It did not 
come under the name of Divine Scripture. 

Lucifer of Cagliari on Sardinia, who died in the year 370, 
does not, so far as I have observed, quote James or Second Peter 
or Third John or Revelation, but then he also fails to quote 
Mark and Philemon, so that the lack of quotations proves 
nothing. He does quote Second John three times (Migne, P. L. 
*3- .780-790). Once he says: "So also when the blessed John 
orders," and again : " Therefore also the apostle says in this 
Second Epistle." He quotes Jude four times close together, 
and that fourteen verses out of Jude's twenty-five. And he 
quotes Hebrews as Paul's (MPL 13. 782-784): "Showing an 
example of whose reprobation Paul says to the Hebrews," and 
there follow fourteen verses, and then three more. He does 
not happen to give us anything from the Revelation, but his 
pupil or adherent Faustinus does. Faustinus refers to Hebrews 
three times as a letter of Paul's, and he also calls it Divine 
Scripture. He quotes the Revelation by name (De trin. 3. 1) : 
" But also the Apostle John says this in the Revelation." 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 279 

Pacianus quotes Hebrews as Paul's, and so does Pelagius. 
Hilary of Rome quotes it in connection with other matter from 
Paul, but does not say exactly that it is his ; doubtless he thought 
so. Julius Hilarianus about the year 397 quotes the Revelation 
by name. Zeno of Verona quotes apparently Second Peter, and 
possibly Hebrews. The Revelation he names as John's. 
Optatus, the Bishop of Milevis, in Numidia, who flourished 
about the year 370, quotes curiously enough an Epistle of 
Peter by name, but the words are not found in the Epistles 
bearing Peter's name. They are more like James 4 11 than any- 
thing else. He writes (De schisma Don. 1. 5) : "Since we have 
read in the Epistle of Peter the Apostle : Do not judge your 
brethren by opinion." That may serve as a warning against 
treating quotations too strictly. No one will think of saying 
that Optatus here intends to declare some apocryphal book to 
be scripture. It is interesting further to see that he in more 
than one place uses the word Testament apparently for both 
Testaments : " The Divine Testament we read alike. We pray 
to one God." 

John Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed preacher from Antioch 
who became Bishop of Constantinople, was preeminently a man 
of the scriptures. Even his homilies show his philological care- 
fulness and his clear insight. His testimony stands properly for 
Syria, where he did his first work. He was born at Antioch 
in 347, and died in the year 407. But he wielded also in and 
from Constantinople during his brief and eventful work there 
a wide influence. His homilies are by far the most diligently 
copied works of the early and of the late Greek Church. If 
we see to-day in a library of Greek manuscripts a fine folio 
volume, if we find in the binding of a manuscript a beautifully 
written parchment leaf, the first thought of an experienced 
scholar is : It is probably Chrysostom. It usually is. He 
refers to the Epistle of James "the Lord's brother," but he 
appears not to make any use of Second Peter, Second and 
Third John, and Jude. Hebrews he considers to be Paul's. 
The Revelation he does not quote. Notwithstanding this 
failure to cite from five of the seven doubted books, Suidas says, 
when speaking of the Apostle John, that " Chrysostom receives 
both his three Epistles and the Revelation." I must confess that 
I do not lay any great stress upon this testimony of Suidas. A 



280 THE CANON 

line or two before he lets the Apostle John live a hundred and 
twenty years, a totally improbable statement, one without the 
least foundation in the known traditions of the early Church, 
and one which would without doubt have been commemorated 
if true in the Church of Asia Minor, and have been known to 
thousands before Suidas published it in the tenth century. I 
could much more easily believe that Chrysostom received all 
three of the Epistles of John and the Revelation than I could 
believe that John had lived to be a hundred and twenty years 
old without its being mentioned by Polycarp or Papias or some 
one else in the second century. But I put no great faith in one 
or the other statement. 

There is not the least reason, that I can see, to think that 
Chrysostom quoted Second Peter in his homilies on John. The 
words are much nearer the passage in Proverbs. At the same 
time we have in the bishop of Helenopolis — the birthplace of 
Constantine's mother — Palladius, a friend of Chrysostom's, who 
wrote a dialogue " On the life and conversation of the sainted 
John, bishop of Constantinople, Golden Mouth," and in this work 
he quotes both Third John and Jude. He writes (Galland, 8. 
313): "About which things Jude the brother of James says," 
and adds Jude 12 . And again (Gall. 8. 322): "As the 
blessed John writes in the Catholic Epistles to Gaius," and he 
quotes 3 John 1_3 and 9 - 10, n . That is Asia Minor. And on 
the other side of the Antioch line we find in a chain — a catena — 
that Eusebius of Emesa, now Horns, about 150 kilometres north 
of Damascus, quoted Second Peter (Wolf, Anecd. Gr. 4. 96) : 
"Wherefore the apostle says in the Catholic (Epistle) : Speech- 
less beast," 2 Peter 2 16 . It is interesting that merely those 
two apparently indifferent words should have caused the reference 
to that Epistle, and should have been handed down to us 
through that chain. A Synopsis of scripture which is placed 
in the editions of the works of Chrysostom gives a very full 
descriptive list of the Old Testament books, and then disposes 
of the New Testament books as well known quite briefly. It 
gives fourteen Epistles of Paul, four Gospels, Acts, and three 
Catholic Epistles. That last can only be applied to James, 
with First Peter and First John. 

We mentioned above a bishop of Asia Minor, a friend of 
Chrysostom's. There is still another and a more important one, 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 28 1 

namely Theodore. He was born at Antioch about the year 
350. At first a priest in Antioch from 383 onwards, he was 
made Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia in 392 and died in 4.28. 
He was what would be called to-day a historical critical exegete, 
and the Church condemned him as a heretic, and did all it could 
to remand his valuable writings to oblivion, although he was the 
most important scholar who had appeared since the days of 
Origen. He wrote commentaries on Matthew, Luke, John, and 
the fourteen Epistles of Paul. These books he acknowledged. 
It is hard to say with certainty what his position was with respect 
to the Catholic Epistles. Summing up as well as can be done, 
in view of the fragmentary condition of his literary remains, it 
seems likely that he rejected James, Second and Third John, 
Jude, and Revelation, and accepted First Peter and First John. 
Another bishop, Theodoretus, was also born at Antioch. He 
was the bishop of Kyros on the Euphrates. So far as we can see 
he agreed with Chrysostom. 

We have from Junilius — who has been supposed to be an 
African bishop, but who now appears to have been by birth an 
African, and by office one of the highest members of state in 
Constantinople — an account of the view of the New Testament 
books at Nisibis in the sixth century. Junilius died soon after 
550. He gives at first only First Peter and First John as 
Catholic Epistles, but says afterwards that a great many people 
accept also James, Second Peter, Jude, Second and Third John. 
Hebrews stands as Paul's. And of Revelation he says that it is 
a matter of much doubt among the Orientals. 

If Junilius was really a statesman we can cap him with 
another, and that a greater one. Cassiodorius was prime minister 
under Theodoric, and then devoted himself to his monks in his 
monastery, Vivarium in Bruttium, in Calabria. In his handbook of 
theology for his ascetes he gave three differently arranged lists of 
the New Testament books in three succeeding chapters. The 
first one is said to be from Jerome, though we do not find it in 
Jerome's works, the second is from Augustine, and the third is from 
what Cassiodorius calls the " old translation." This third list does 
not name Second Peter or Second and Third John. It probably 
includes Hebrews silently as Paul's, and it has Revelation. 
This book was apparently much used in the West, but that 
omission or those omissions of the third list will probably not 



282 THE CANON 

have had the least influence upon anyone. The " old transla- 
tion " may not have had those books in Cassiodorius' volumes, 
but the books were in vogue in the current translation, and that 
was enough for the thoroughly uncritical mind of the average 
monk or priest. The Codex Claromontanus gives us in the list 
above referred to James, Second Peter, Second and Third John, 
Jude, and Revelation. The omission of Philippians, First and 
Second Thessalonians, and Hebrews is probably merely a clerical 
error of a copyist. 

Two men in the West call for special remark : the one because 
of his intense occupation with the scriptures, the other because 
of his importance in the Church of his day and of the following 
centuries. These are Jerome and Augustine. Jerome was not 
of the great mental power of Theodore of Mopsuestia, for 
example, but he was of good parts, travelled widely, studied 
diligently, owned his debt to his distinguished predecessors from 
whose works he drew, and he worked enormously. Augustine 
was locally and in his studies much more limited, but he made 
up for that by a keenness of perception, a breadth of mental 
range, a fixedness of purpose, and a force of communicating his 
thoughts which have made him the leader and the resource of 
Western Christianity from the fifth century to the twentieth. 

Jerome was by birth of a Christian family in Pannonia, and 
saw the light about the year 346 at Stridon. He studied at 
Rome, then travelled north as far as Trier, then to the East, where 
in the year 373, as one of the consequences of a severe illness, he 
determined to devote himself to the study of the scriptures. 
After spending five years in the desert, having been ordained 
presbyter at Antioch in the year 379, having visited Constantinople 
to hear Gregory of Nazianzus, and having stayed three years 
(382-385) at Rome, he returned to the East, to Antioch, to Egypt, 
and finally to Bethlehem, where he passed the rest of his life : 
386-420. What concerns us most is his revision of the Latin 
translation of the New Testament, of which he handed the 
Gospels to the Bishop of Rome, Damasus, in the year 384. 
Perhaps he completed the rest — he did not do it so carefully as 
the Gospels — a year later. This New Testament contained the 
books which we use, and as it little by little came to be the chief 
Latin copy, its books became the accepted books of the Western 
Church. Nevertheless, with his encyclopaedic view of Christi- 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 283 

anity he knew very well the doubts that had been raised as to 
some books, and he referred to them upon occasion. 

Oddly enough, he shows by a most trifling circumstance that he 
considered Barnabas almost if not quite a New Testament book. 
That came about as follows. With his knowledge of Hebrew he 
drew up at Bethlehem in the year 388 a list of the Hebrew names 
in the scriptures, giving their meaning, book by book. Therefore 
every book in the New Testament comes into the list, save 
Second John, which does not happen to contain any name ; 
Third John is in the list sometimes called Second John, because 
it here is the second Epistle of John's that is mentioned. Of 
course, that does not mean that he rejected Second John. And 
then at the end of the New Testament he gives thirteen names 
from Barnabas, winding up with Satan. That was or is almost a 
canonising of Barnabas for him. He was a great defender of 
Origen's, and therefore closely bound to Alexandria, and this high 
estimation of Barnabas was probably a result of his imbibing the 
Alexandrian special valuation of that book. 

Here and there we can find references to the case of the 
seven doubtful books. Speaking of James, "who is called the 
brother of the Lord," he says (De vir. ill. 2) : " He wrote only 
one Epistle, which is one of the seven Catholics, and which very 
letter is asserted to have been published by somebody else under 
his name, although by degrees as time goes on it has gained 
authority." As for Second Peter, he has a special suggestion 
(Ep. 120): "Therefore he [Paul] used to have Titus as his in- 
terpreter" — interpreter here means also scribe, — "just as also the 
sainted Peter had Mark, whose Gospel was composed by Peter's 
dictating and his writing. Finally also, the two letters of Peter's 
which we have differ from each other in style and character and 
in the structure of the words. From which we perceive that he 
used different interpreters." And in another work, speaking of 
Peter he says (De vir. ill. 1) : "He wrote two Epistles which are 
called Catholic, of which the second is by many denied to be his 
because of the difference of style from the former." Second and 
Third John do not seem to him to be from the apostle. He 
does not state, as in the case of James, Second Peter, and Jude, 
that the given author " wrote " them. In his account of John 
he says (De vir. ill. 9): "But he wrote also one Epistle, . . . 
which is approved by all churchly and very learned men. But 



284 THE CANON 

the other two . . . are said to be from John a presbyter." He 
writes of Jude (De vir. ill. 4) : " Jude, the brother of the Lord, 
left behind a little Epistle which is of the seven Catholics. And 
because it quotes the book of Enoch which is apocryphal it is 
rejected by a great many. Yet by age even and custom it has de- 
served authority, and it is reckoned among the sacred scriptures." 

The remaining two books are spoken of by Jerome in a letter 
to a patrician, Caudianus Postumus Dardanus, written in the 
year 414, and the passage is very instructive, in view of the 
opposition to Hebrews in the Western Church (Ep. 129): 
"That is to be said to our friends, that this Epistle which is 
inscribed to the Hebrews is received not only by the Churches of 
the East, but also by all Church writers of the Greek tongue 
before our day, as of Paul the Apostle, although many think that 
it is from Barnabas or Clement. And it makes no difference 
whose it is, since it is from a churchman, and is celebrated in the 
daily reading of the Churches. And if the usage of the Latins 
does not receive it among the Canonical Scriptures, neither indeed 
by the same liberty do the Churches of the Greeks receive the 
Revelation of John. And yet we accept both, in that we follow 
by no means the habit of to-day, but the authority of ancient 
writers, who for the most part quote each of them, not as they 
are sometimes accustomed to do the apocrypha, and even also as 
they use rarely the examples of the profane books, but as canonical 
and churchly." Twenty years earlier, in a letter to Paulinus, about 
the study of the scriptures, Jerome said (Ep. 53): "Paul the 
Apostle wrote to seven Churches, for the eighth to the Hebrews 
is put by many outside of the number."' That is less decided. 
He had become more clearly in favour of the authenticity between 
394 and 414. Jerome was no incisive critic. He was in general 
a vain and quarrelsome man, but he acquiesced calmly in the list 
of books for the New Testament which were then in use. The 
nearest approach to personal dissent seems to be the view of 
Second and Third John. But those Epistles were on the one 
hand minimal quantities, and on the other hand they might well 
come under the delightfully liberal rule for canonisation that 
Jerome gives in speaking of Hebrews. 

Jerome's friend Augustine, who was born in the year 354 at 
Tagaste in Numidia, and after a wild youth and a heretical and 
half-heathen early manhood was baptized at Milan in 387, 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 285 

returned to Africa an ardent Christian, and became assistant 
Bishop of Hippo in 395. He too accepted in a way the books 
now in our New Testament. He said that the Christian must 
read them, and at first know them at least by the reading even if 
he cannot comprehend them, but only the books called canonical. 
The other books are only to be read by one who is well grounded 
in the faith of the truth. But he shows after all that he 
recognised grades in value among the canonical books. The 
Christian reader (De doctr. Chr. 2. 12): "Will hold fast there- 
fore to this measure in the Canonical Scriptures, that he place 
in the front rank those which are received by all Catholic Churches 
before those which some do not receive. Among those, more- 
over, which are not received by all, let him prefer those which 
more and more important Churches accept to those which 
fewer and less authoritative Churches hold. Should he, however, 
find some to be held by very many and others by very weighty 
Churches, although this cannot easily happen, yet I think that 
they are to be regarded as of equal authority." 

In his list of the books he puts James at the end of the 
Catholic Epistles, thus giving Peter the first place. But all the 
seven doubtful books stand unquestioned in his list. It is 
perfectly clear that he has a certain feeling of hesitancy with 
respect to the Epistle to the Hebrews. He says in the list, it 
is true, that there are fourteen Epistles of Paul's, and Hebrews 
follows as the fourteenth after Philemon. But when he quotes 
it, it turns out that in his later works he avoids with painful 
accuracy saying that Paul wrote it. He quotes it and therefore 
he doubtless thinks it canonical, and he once calls it directly 
" Holy Scripture," but he does not know who wrote it. He 
says : " As we read in the Epistle to the Hebrews," " As is 
written," " Which is written," " Who writing to the Hebrews said," 
"Tell it to him who wrote to the Hebrews," "This, moreover, 
therefore said the author of that sacred Epistle," " In the Epistle 
to the Hebrews which the distinguished defenders of the Catholic 
rule have used as a witness." Curiously enough, Julian the 
Pelagian, against whom Augustine writes, does ascribe Hebrews 
to Paul (Aug. contr. Jul. 3. 40) : " The Apostle understood this 
type of speech, who spoke as follows to the Hebrews." As for 
the Kevelation, Augustine (Serm. 299) once suggested the pos- 
sibility that his opponent, a Pelagian, may not accept it : " And 



286 THE CANON 

if by chance thou who likest these [heretical] things shouldst not 
accept this scripture [a quotation from Revelation], or, if thou 
accept, despise and say : They are not expressly named." 

Jerome and Augustine settled the matter of the number of 
the books of the New Testament for the orthodox circles in the 
Western Church so far as there may have lingered in it here and 
there doubts as to some of the books. But we shall see in a 
moment that in heretical circles other opinions ventured to 
continue. We saw above that certain books which do not belong 
to our New Testament were long favoured in the West even in 
thoroughly churchly provinces. In Spain, after the reconciliation 
of the Western Goths with the Church, their dislike to the 
Revelation evidently continued to show itself. In consequence 
the Council of Toledo, in the year 633, declared that the ancient 
councils stood for the authorship of the Revelation on the part 
of the evangelist John. It added in a sentence, which neverthe- 
less appears to be of doubtful authenticity, that many regard it 
as of no authority and refuse to preach from it. The decree of 
the council was (Mansi, 10. 624): "If anyone henceforth either 
shall not have accepted it, or shall not have preached from it 
from Easter to Whitsuntide at the time of mass in the church, 
he shall have the sentence of excommunication." 

Here we may close our view of the criticism of the canon. The 
one great result is that which has not come to the surface during 
the whole discussion. We have not said anything about a 
determination of the books which belong to the New Testament 
on the part of a general council of the Christian Church. We 
could say nothing about such a determination, because there never 
was one. Now and then a local or partial council ratified the 
statements of some preceding Church writer. 

The criticism of the canon shows, then, that in the sense in 
which the word used to be understood, and is by some to-day 
still understood, there never was a canon. At no period in the 
history of Christianity did the necessity make itself apparent to 
the whole Church to say just what was and just what was not 
scripture. Tertullian mentioned synods, which can only have 
been small local synods, that rejected the Shepherd of Hermas, 
but he spoke of none which had stated what the books of the 
New Testament were. He spoke of the Jews as rejecting 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 287 

certain things in the Old Testament " which sound out Christ," 
and gave thus a pleasing rule for the correctness of biblical 
literature. But he did not lay this down as a canon, or say that 
it had been universally and authoritatively sanctioned. Augustine, 
the sound churchman, declared that the scriptures depend from 
the Church. He even went so far as to say in the contest against 
the half heathenish Manichasans : " I indeed should not believe 
in the Gospel, if the authority of the Catholic Church did not 
press me to it." It is true that Christianity is a life, and that 
this life lives on in the Church. Yet this life is the Gospel. It is 
nothing without the Gospel. It seems to me, therefore, that this 
excited word of Augustine's was all in all a frivolous word. It is 
upon a par with the foolishness of those Christians who to-day 
declare in theological controversy that if the contention of their 
opponents, Christian opponents, be proved true, they will give 
up the Bible. And yet even this Augustine could not point to 
an authoritative deliverance of the whole Church touching the 
books of scripture. More than that, although he, with Jerome, 
proved in a way the surcease of doubts as to books now in our 
New Testament, he nevertheless really put down two points which 
are altogether incompatible with the notion that, let us say, by 
the time of Irenseus the canon of the New Testament was for all 
good orthodox Christians a definitely settled fact. 

The first point touches, in the first place, the fact that he does 
not regard the books of the New Testament as all of equal 
authority, as having each and all of them the same right to be in 
the collection. In the second place, it decides definitely that 
they have not each and all equal authority and value. In the third 
place, it does not refer the decision upon the quality, character, 
authority, and canonical standing of the separate books to ancient 
and acknowledged councils and their decrees. In the fourth place, 
it refers the decision to a majority vote, a vote which combines 
numbers and authority. In the fifth place, the judge who is to 
decide is not a council then in session, or soon to be gathered 
together, but the Christian reader. In the sixth- place, he puts 
before our eyes, taken strictly, five classes of books. — A. The 
books accepted by all churches. J3. The books rejected by 
some churches. A. remains a class for itself. B. is divided into 
four possible classes, although he scarcely thinks that the two 
last classes will really come into consideration. B.a. contains 



288 THE CANON 

the books that many and important churches accept. The 
"important" churches in Augustine's eyes are those that have 
apostolical bishops' seats : Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and those 
that received Epistles from apostles. B.b. comprises the books 
that are accepted by fewer and by less important churches. B.C. 
comprises the books that are received by a great many, — that is to 
say, by the majority of the churches, but without the important 
churches. Whereas B.d. includes the books that but a few, 
it is true, yet those the important churches, accept. According 
to Augustine's view, of course, the A. class is to be accepted and 
to be regarded as of the highest authority. The B. class is to be 
thought less authoritative. Going to the under-divisions of the B. 
class, B.a. is to be accepted, the books in B.b. are to be 
rejected. The case is more difficult between B.C. and B.d., 
between multitude and knowledge or insight. Augustine knows 
how to solve the problem. The decision is : "I think they are 
to be held to be of equal authority." That is a curiously 
indefinite canonical decision for the fifth century. That is the 
first point. The second point is the great one, but it demands 
no discussion. It is the fact that Augustine thus really tells us 
that he regards the number of the books in the New Testament 
as not yet settled. It is still a question whether this or that book 
belongs to the fully authoritative New Testament or not. There 
is no canon in the technical sense of the word. 

But we have a New Testament, and the Christian Church of 
Europe and America supposes it to consist in all parts of the 
world of the same books, of the books, of course, which we use. 
That supposition is the result of what might be called a half- 
unconscious process of closing the eyes to the testimony of 
history. 

When the great mental upturning of the fifteenth and six- 
teenth centuries took place, many Christians saw clearly how 
precarious the standing of the seven disputed books was, of 
James, Second Peter, Second and Third John, Jude, Hebrews, 
and Revelation. Ever prudent Erasmus aimed his judicious 
questionings — which were interwoven with assurances of willing 
acceptance of the books — at Hebrews, Second and Third John, 
and Revelation. Luther declared freely that five books, John, 
Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and First Peter, were enough 
for any Christian ; yet, while he received the books of the New 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 289 

Testament in general, he boldly put Hebrews, the " straw-like " 
James, Jude, and Revelation in a lower class. Karlstadt made 
three groups of books. The Gospels formed the first. The second 
consisted of the thirteen Epistles of Paul with First Peter and 
First John. And the third contained the seven disputed books. 
Oecolampadius stated that James, Second Peter, Second and 
Third John, Jude, and Revelation were not to be compared to 
the rest, which was equivalent to putting them in a much lower 
second class. Calvin discussed the disputed books quite freely. 
He actually accepted everything in a way. Nevertheless he 
showed that he was not overmuch pleased with James and 
Jude, and not much pleased with Second Peter. And in his 
commentary he left out Second and Third John and Revela- 
tion, and called First John "the Epistle of John." Grotius, 
who died in 1645, accepted Hebrews as probably written by 
Luke, and James and Revelation as John's. But he regarded 
Second Peter as a brace of Epistles — the first = chs. 1. 2, 
the second = ch. 3 — written by James' successor, Simeon, the 
second bishop of Jerusalem. He did not think that Second 
and Third John were from John. And he supposed that Jude 
had been written by a bishop of Jerusalem named Jude, who 
lived under Hadrian. 

That was all very well. Such discussions showed progress 
and not a retrograde movement. They revivified tradition. 
But there were, on the other hand, motives rife which made a 
greater definiteness seem desirable. Rome and her offshoots 
sought for decisions. It was to them immaterial whether or not 
they were true to history. They wished a firm basis for their 
arguments in an immovable Word. 

Rome wished on her part to stand up for that Word which 
the Reformers were placing in the foreground, and desired to 
sanction a form of it agreeable to herself. Therefore the Council 
of Trent, on the 8th of April 1546, made the Old Testament, 
including the now fully normative Apocrypha, and the complete 
New Testament a matter of faith. It even went so far as to 
make the Latin text, which its leaders used, the " authentic " text 
of the Bible. The insufficient insight of those who guided that 
decision was shown by the fact that the papal edition of that 
" authentic " text was so bad as to need speedy and shamefaced 
replacement by a somewhat better though far from excellent 
19 



290 THE CANON 

papal edition. We must remember, however, that the Council 
of Trent was no general council. So much for the Church of 
Rome. Its position received a curious side-light from Sixtus of 
Siena twenty years after the council. Sixtus in the year 1566 
put the seven disputed books as well as three sections of the 
text of other books into a second-class canon. Antonio a Matre 
Dei of Salamanca followed Sixtus in the year 1670 and added 
another passage to the list. 

It might have been thought that the Churches of the Re- 
formation would retain a free position over against the criticism 
of the canon. Not at all. It is true that they did not allow 
the great authority of the Church to compel their acceptance of 
the books. They declared that the free spirit of the Christian 
recognised the genuine work of the Divine Spirit in these holy 
books and in their use. Yet they were not content to leave the 
books to care for themselves. They followed the lead of Rome 
and declared the whole New Testament for undoubted scripture, 
as, for example, the Westminster Assembly of 1643 and the Swiss 
Declaration of Faith of 1675. The latter went so far as to say 
that in the Old Testament the Hebrew consonants and even — 
imagine it — the Masoretic vowel-points (or at least their force) 
were inspired. Thus everything was slurred over. The seven 
disputed books had become indisputable. From that day to this 
the questioning of the authenticity of one of the New Testament 
books has even in Protestant circles called forth the Anathema 
set by the Council of Trent upon that crime. 

In spite of all that, there never was an authoritative, 
generally declared and generally received canon. To the 
supposition that a canon exists is to be said : firstly, that 
the supposed state of affairs is, strictly taken, not the real state 
of affairs; and secondly, that the thing which produced the 
actual, not the supposed, state of affairs was no single circum- 
stance, no historical single event, but a series of causes working 
in one district in one way, in another district, land, church in 
another way. 

The supposed state of affairs is not the real state of affairs. 
In the Ethiopic Church, for example, we find in the manuscripts 
for the number of the books of the Bible : eighty-one. Of these, 
forty-six belong to the Old Testament, which does not now 
concern us. The New Testament consists of thirty-five books, 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 2QI 

or of our twenty-seven and of eight which come under the head 
of Clement and the Synodos. That is a surplus. In the Syrian 
Church, Second Peter, Second and Third John, Jude, and the 
Revelation were practically no part of the New Testament. 
Here we have a minus. That is of itself enough. But it is 
generally supposed that at least the great Greek Church, the 
mother of all Churches except the Church in Jerusalem, had 
and has the whole of our New Testament. In a way that might 
be affirmed. The Revelation stands in the lists of books on 
many a page. And it has been commented upon at least by 
two Greek authors, hard put to it as we are when we try to say 
precisely when Andrew and Arethas of Caesarea lived, one 
probably at the end of the fifth century, the other possibly at 
almost the same date, but using his predecessor's book. But 
as a matter of fact the Revelation belongs, of course not to the 
Gospel, but just as little to the Apostle of the Greek Church, 
and only what is in the Gospel and the Apostle is read in church 
as Holy Scripture. Turning that around and putting it blankly, 
the Revelation has never had, has not to-day, a place among 
the Bible lessons of the Greek Church. 

Further, it is to be urged in the same direction that the 
Revelation in a large number of cases in the manuscripts which 
contain it does not stand among the books of the New Testa- 
ment. There are a few, comparatively a very few, Greek manu- 
scripts which contain our whole New Testament, — that is to say, 
which contain the other books and the Revelation. But the other 
books are commonly copied off without the Revelation. The 
continuation or the other side of this circumstance is to be found 
in the fact that Revelation often stands in the middle of volumes 
that have no other biblical contents. We do not often find the 
four Gospels or the Acts, or the Catholic Epistles, or the Epistles 
of Paul in volumes of profane, that is to say, not scripture litera- 
ture ; but we do often find the Revelation in such volumes. For 
example, one manuscript contains lives of saints, the Acts of 
Thomas, and then theological treatises, and Revelation stands 
between the life of Euphrosyne and an essay of Basil's on love to 
God. Various of the manuscripts which contain only the Revela- 
tion are the quires containing Revelation taken out from the 
middle of some such general theological book (see pp. 369, 383). 

It would, I think, be no great exaggeration to say that the 



292 THE CANON 

printing of the Greek New Testament formed the most important 
step for the practical association of the Revelation with the other 
books of the New Testament. But that remark must not be 
supposed to have effect with the Greek Church. The printed 
New Testaments of Western Europe had, have had, have to-day, 
so far as I can judge from actual vision, very little or almost nothing 
to do with the Church of the East. The printed Gospels and 
Apostles have held the ground there, neither one of them with the 
Revelation. And it is pertinent to mention here another thing 
which recalls our earlier allusions to the reading in the churches. 
During all the centuries and still to-day a number of books which 
form no part of our New Testament are read in church in the 
Greek Church under our division : Man to Man. Some of them, 
certainly one of them, for I remember at this moment John 
of the Ladder, are read yearly at a given time, the Ladder during 
Lent. But enough of this. The supposed state of affairs is 
not the real state of affairs. The British and Foreign Bible 
Society and the Roman College for Propagating the Faith are 
gradually spreading abroad our New Testament. But neither 
the one nor the other is a General Council authorised to settle 
the canon. 

No single historical act or event brought about the supposed 
but not actually universal determination of the books which we 
have in our New Testament as constituting, they alone and they 
all, the second part of Holy Scripture. No apostle, not even 
the Nestor John, settled the canon. There was no settled canon 
at the time of the consolidation of the Catholic Church shortly 
after the middle of the second century. No fixed canon guided 
the scriptural studies of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers 
who composed the Council of Nice. And all the few and 
scattered statements and lists of books accepted and disputed 
and spurious failed in reality to secure one universally 
acknowledged New Testament of exactly the same contents. 
Nevertheless the truth, the Church, Christianity cannot be said 
to have suffered by this lack. Even fewer books than the 
Syrian Church recognised would have been enough to herald 
the teaching of Jesus and to sustain, so far as it was desirable 
that written records should sustain, the life that has flowed 
in an unbroken stream from Jesus until to-day. 

Let us for an instant press this thought. The books that we 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 293 

call New Testament were certainly for the most part in existence 
before the year 100. The Gospels and the letters of Paul form 
the two greatest divisions of this collection. One or more of the 
Gospels or a combination of all four of them, — which was the most 
decided recognition of the four, — and some of the letters of Paul 
were at an early date, long before the year 200, to be found 
in the Church of every Christian district. The multiplication 
of the books, both the recopying repeatedly of one book and 
the addition in church after church of a new book, an Epistle 
or a Gospel, or the Acts or the Revelation, was not taken in hand 
by a Bible society or a council or a synod, or even so far as 
we can see by a single bishop, much as we may easily imagine 
that one and another bishop took especial interest in having his 
books, the books used in his church, spread abroad through 
other churches, and in having as many books as possible 
added to those already in use in his own church. Some- 
thing of that kind we saw in the case of the letters of Ignatius 
and the letters about copies of them between Philippi and 
Smyrna and Antioch. Little by little the list of the books in 
each church grew. 

The Church did not at first consider it necessary to issue de- 
crees about the books. The books were something subsidiary. 
They were all good enough. They were like daily bread, and like 
rain for the thirsty land. But it was not necessary to decree 
anything about them. Finally, one and another really reflected 
upon the matter, and some lists were made. Some of the earlier 
lists tried to be very precise and to determine best books, a trifle 
less good books, poorer and poorest books. And then in later 
time followed lists that aimed at fulness. The list that is named 
after Gelasius and then after Hormisdas might be entitled : a 
list of the books which should form the library of the Christian. 
Inasmuch, however, as few Christians had the money to buy 
such a large library, we could name the list : a catalogue of the 
books from which the Christian should choose his library. 
There was then no formation of the canon in the sense that 
a general council took up the question. The number of books 
in the New Testament simply grew. When anyone had the 
question as to the sacred character of a book to decide, he was 
very likely to ask whether it was from an apostle or not. We 
sec that Tertullian, like others before him, succeeds in agreeing 



294 THE CANON 

to Mark and Luke by the connection of the one with Peter and 
of the other with Paul. And this same Tertullian, much as 
he likes Hebrews, lets it stand aside because its author, whom 
he may well have rightly thought to be Barnabas, was not a 
Twelve-Apostle and not Paul the special apostle. Many another 
reason came into play at one time and at another, in one place 
and the other. A book favoured Gnosticism, therefore it 
certainly was not sacred. A book used an apocryphal book, 
therefore it could not be received. There was no general rule 
that everywhere held good. 

At the present time, with our clearer view of ancient history, 
it is necessary to make a distinction between the contents and 
meaning of three terms : truth, inspiration, canon. Many 
Christians have nailed themselves to the word canon, and to 
the thought that in some mysterious way during the early second 
century the Spirit of God gathered precisely our New Testament, 
from Matthew to Revelation, into one single volume, — a large 
roll that would have made, — and that since that time the whole 
Christian Church has held fast to just this book. We have seen 
that this notion has not the least basis in history, that the facts 
were of a totally different character. Such persons are not a 
little inclined, if one calls attention to the state of the case, 
to fall back upon the thought of inspiration. Their theory is 
that God caused these words to be written, and that by a positive 
necessity of the course of events He then took care that they 
should be gathered together into the one collection. This 
theory is as a theory beautiful, and it has been a comfort to 
many a Christian. But it fails to agree with what really took 
place. We see by turning back the pages of the years that 
God simply did not, in the way supposed, have the books 
collected. We say : Man proposes, God disposes. We might 
here say : Man imagines, God did. I believe that God watched 
over every step in the paths of the early Christians, but He had 
no thought of this theory of inspiration and of canon. If any- 
one be then inclined to say that this puts an end to all faith 
in the Scriptures, he may reassure himself with the reflection 
that when God makes nuts, the point is not the shell of the nut, 
but the kernel. If God sends the truth to men, the thing that 
He cares for, the thing that His Spirit watches over, is the truth. 
He saw to it that the early Christians, through all the 



THE AGE OF THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA 295 

vicissitudes of their earthly fortunes and in spite of all their 
own human weakness and fallibility, got the truth and passed 
the truth along to us. The great thing for us is, not to become 
excited about diverging views as to a canon and canonicity, but 
to take the truth and live in the truth, and live the truth and 
impart it in its purity to others. 



296 



297 



THE TEXT 

OF 

THE NEW TESTAMENT 



298 



299 



THE TEXT. 



i. 

PAPYRUS. 

As a general rule the mass of people take things as they are. 
They are also likely to think, or at least to go upon the sup- 
position, that things always have been as they now are. They 
can buy a New Testament, a nicely bound one, for a mere trifle. 
It rarely occurs to them that six centuries ago that would not 
have been possible. Perhaps there are men who would be sur- 
prised to learn that Paul and even Peter and John and James 
did not each carry a little New Testament in his girdle. Yet it 
is not strange that the knowledge of just what Christians in the 
early ages were and did and had, should not be the common 
property of the unlearned. Externals are not the main thing. 

Let us go back to the first century, to the days of Jesus. 
The only time that we hear of Jesus writing is in the story about 
the woman taken in adultery. He wrote upon the ground, as if 
He did not know that the scribes and Pharisees were near Him 
and were talking. He looked up and spoke to them, and again 
He wrote upon the ground. Perhaps He only drew circles and 
made figures of various forms with His fingers in the sand. It 
has been thought that He may have written the sins of the 
accusers. But we do not know. If Jesus ever wrote anything, 
He may have written as the Arabs write to-day, simply holding a 
piece of paper in His left hand and writing as we do with the 
right hand. However that may be, Jesus did not write the New 
Testament. So far as we know, He did not write a word of it. 

It is not only not impossible, but it is even quite likely that 
various people had written down some things that are in our 
Gospels before the authors of these Gospels began their work. We 



300 THE TEXT 

do not need to deal with them. We have enough to do with the 
books of the New Testament. It is possible that some of Paul's 
letters were the first documents that were written that we now 
have in our New Testament. Here we must observe how 
strangely history repeats itself in varying forms. The older men 
of to-day grew up at a time at which most men wrote for them- 
selves what they wished to entrust to paper. To-day, however, 
everyone is eager to have a stenographer with a writing machine, 
or to tell his thoughts to a grammophone and hand that over to 
his type-writing clerk. At Paul's day, much as is the case to-day 
in the East and in the South, even men who could write were in 
the habit of having scribes to do the drudgery of writing for them. 
If a man were not rich, he might have a young friend or a pupil 
who was ready to wield the pen for him. It comports less with 
the dignity of age in the East to write. The old man strokes his 
beard and dictates his words to the scribe. That is what Paul 
did, although I do not know whether or not he had the beard 
which Christian art gives him. He had a good reason for using 
another's hand, for his eyes were weak. The Epistle to the 
Galatians was an exception. His delicacy forbade him to dictate 
such a scolding letter. That was a matter between him and the 
Galatians alone. Let us turn to the Epistle to the Romans. 
For our purpose one Epistle is as good as another, and which 
one could be better than this chief Epistle ? It was Tertius who 
wrote it, if the sixteenth chapter belongs to it. Timothy and 
Lucius, and Jason, and Sosipater were probably all sitting around 
Paul and Tertius at Corinth or at Cenchrea when Tertius wrote 
their greetings in 16 21 , and he added his own before he went on 
to name Gaius. 

When Paul told Tertius that he wished to write a letter by 
Tertius' hand, the first thing that Tertius had to do was to get 
pens and ink and paper. He may well have had ink at hand, 
possibly hanging in his girdle, a bottle of ink made from oak-galls. 
If he could find them, he certainly prepared three or four pens so 
as not to keep Paul waiting while he mended pens. Of course, 
these were not steel pens. The metal pens in ancient times 
were probably chiefly intended to make a fine show on a rich 
man's table. For actual work a reed pen was used. A scholar 
once wrote that the bad writing in a certain New Testament 
manuscript was probably due to its having been written with a 



PAPYRUS 301 

reed pen instead of with a stylus. But you cannot write with 
ink with a stylus, and our most exquisite manuscripts were 
written with reed pens ; and some people draw daintily to-day 
with reed pens. Tertius will therefore have cut half a dozen 
reed pens and laid them at his side ready for use. 

The paper that he got was what was called papyrus, which is 
only the word paper in another shape. The reeds for the pens 
came from the marshes or river or sea edges, and the paper 
came from the marshes and rivers too. Papyrus is a plant that 
one can often find in well appointed parks. In the parks it is 
four or five feet high. If I am not mistaken I saw it fifteen feet 
high at the Arethusa spring at Syracuse. It has a three-cornered 
stem which is of pith, with vertical cell-pipes, and the sides are 
covered by a thin green skin. There are no joints. At the top 
is a large inverted tassel of grass-like hair like the crest for a 
helmet. The great place for papyrus in ancient times was Egypt, 
although European rivers, for example, the Anapo near Syracuse, 
also produced it. The pith stem was cut crosswise into lengths 
of fifteen or twenty centimetres according to wish, and then cut 
lengthwise into thin flat strips like tape. These tape-like strips 
were laid vertically to the edge of the table side by side till there 
were enough for a leaf of the desired size. Then other strips 
were laid across them, that is to say, horizontally, or running with 
the edge of the table. Between the two layers was a thin glue 
or paste. These leaves were pressed, so that the strips should 
all stick flat together, and left to dry. The drying is easy in 
Egypt. Things dry almost before they have come to perceive 
that they are wet. The dried leaves were a trifle rough. For 
the thread-like walls of those longitudinal cells often rose above 
the surface. For nice paper the surface was then smoothed off, 
it may be with pumice-stone or with an ink-fish's bone, or it 
was hammered. It was a very good surface to write upon, not 
unlike birch bark, which many readers will know from the 
Adirondacs or Maine or Canada. 

It has sometimes been supposed that all papyrus leaves, 
that is, all leaves of paper made from papyrus, were of the 
same size. That was not the case. A scholar explained that 
Second John and Third John were just that long, because no 
more would go upon the papyrus leaf on which they were 
written. That theory neglected the size of the writing. I 



302 THE TEXT 

write on a half foolscap page, 21 x 16.3 centimetres 1200 or 
even 1700 or 1800 words, whereas people who write larger put 
fewer words on such a page, perhaps 200 or 300. But that 
theory also failed to observe that the papyrus lengths could be 
cut at will ; and as for that, as we shall see in a moment, if a man 
had wished for a papyrus leaf six metres each way it would have 
been easy to paste the leaves together and reach those dimensions. 
Let us go back to Tertius. Paul will have told him that he 
intended to write a long letter, and Tertius will have bought a 
number of good-sized leaves, not ladies' note-paper, but a business 
quarto probably. It is even possible that he bought at once a 
roll that was about as large as he thought would be necessary. 
If so, that roll was made, as he could have made it himself, by 
pasting the single leaves together. If the roll proved too long he 
could cut the rest of it off. If it were too short, he could paste 
as many more leaves on to it as he liked. Tertius began to write 
at the left end of the roll, if he bought the leaves ready pasted 
together. That is to say, when he began to write he turned the 
roll so that the part to be unrolled was at his right hand. If 
Paul had wished him to write Hebrew, — Paul could have 
written Hebrew, I question whether Tertius could have, — he 
would have turned the roll upside down and begun to write with 
the part to be unrolled at his left hand. He probably wrote in 
columns that were about as broad as a finger is long. That is an 
uncertain measure. So is the breadth of the columns. But 
when the roll was already made up and had its curves set it was 
not so easy to write a broad column. And, besides, the narrow 
columns were easier to read. 

So Tertius began : " Paul a servant of Jesus Christ, called 
to be an apostle." That Epistle was not written at one sitting. 
It is much more likely to have been written at twenty or thirty 
sittings. In the East there is less hurry than in the West. 
And Paul had to weave his tent-cloth. But at last the end 
came: "To whom be glory unto the ages of the ages. Amen." 
One would like to know whether Tertius appreciated that 
Epistle. Doubtless he did, as well as one could then. But 
he could not value it as we do after these centuries, during 
which it has instructed and warned and chided and comforted 
hundreds of thousands of Christians. And after it was done 
Phcebe carried it to Rome, always supposing that the sixteenth 



PAPYRUS 303 

chapter was written at the same time with the first fourteen, a 
question which does not now concern us. It is not hard to 
look in upon the Christians at Rome when the Epistle reaches 
that city. Phcebe gives it to one of the chief men among 
the Christians. At the first possible moment, probably on a 
Lord's Day — for they would not think of calling that day by 
the Jewish name of Sabbath, as some English-speaking people 
do ; Sabbath is the name of Saturday — on the Lord's Day, 
because on that day everybody, or at least many of the Christians, 
could take the time for a long meeting, they read the Epistle 
before the assembled Church. Did they read it all through at 
one meeting ? It seems to me likely that they did. They will 
have wished to know all that Paul had to say. 

The next question that arises for us is not, whether the 
Roman Christians then proceeded to take to heart all the good 
advice that Paul gave them. That belongs to another depart- 
ment of theology. What we wish to know is, what they did with 
the Epistle, with this long letter, after they had read it that 
first time. One thing is clear. They did not then tear it up 
and throw it away because, as people to-day so often say of 
letters just received and at once destroyed, they knew all that 
was in it. It is actually possible to read in scientific books that 
doubtless the early Christian Churches read the letters sent 
to them by the apostles once or twice and then put them 
away. The impression given is, that they then perhaps for 
months and years did not read them again. To my mind it 
is not easy to find anything more unreasonable and improbable 
than that. 

The early Christians were largely poor people, many of them 
not well educated, many of them certainly with no more 
education than the school of hard living and hard work had 
bestowed upon them. There were then no newspapers. What 
men knew of the events of the day had to be gained almost 
altogether from hearsay. There were also, and particularly for 
poor people, even if they knew how to *--ead, but few books to 
be had. And there were still fewer Christian books. Christians 
who could write books were still few. The Christians had as 
yet no great motive for writing books. One thing filled their 
thoughts : It will soon be Heaven. They did not think that 
this earth had still a long lease to run. If we could imagine 



J04 THE TEXT 

that one of them had said : I am going to write a big book, 
we should at once also imagine that his brother said : What is 
the use? The trumpet will sound before you are half done. 
And, further, there were not many preachers. It is true that 
Paul's advice to the Corinthians seems to imply an extremely 
eager participation of anybody and everybody in the church 
services. Yet churches are different in such respects. Every 
city had not such enterprising rhetorical and prophetical and 
ecstatic members as Corinth had. And times differ. Corinth 
may well afterwards have had its periods of greater quiet on the 
part of the single Christians in the church gatherings. Summing 
it all up, the early Christian churches will certainly have 
welcomed new reading matter, new writings that they could 
read in church. That does not imply that they looked upon 
this letter and such letters as equivalent to the Old Testament. 
Not in the least. This letter was a message to them all from 
a well-known preacher, and therefore it could be read in church. 
A part of this letter would have been, will have been, for them 
like a sermon from Paul. 

It is not to be supposed that they will every Sunday from 
that first Sunday onwards have read the whole Epistle through. 
Nor can we be sure that on every single Sunday they read 
some parts of it. But it seems to me that we may set down 
two things as quite certain under such circumstances. One is, 
that at the first, as a necessary following up of the first reading, 
the church at Rome will have soon and repeatedly read 
and discussed given parts of the Epistle. The other is, that 
even after time had passed, especially after Paul had been 
there twice and had died as a martyr, a year, two years, 
ten years later they will at least occasionally have again read 
this Epistle, section after section. That thought presents, how- 
ever, various further considerations for us touching the text. 
We are not now studying directly Church history, but book 
history. If you please, it is the book division of Church 
history. We are to fix our eyes on that roll of papyrus. It is 
a very fair sized roll, for Tertius in writing a letter that was to 
be read to the church was not likely to use a diamond size of 
handwriting. And, besides, only one side of the roll, the inside, 
was written upon. That was what we may call the " right side " 
of the papyrus. It was the side on which the strips of papyrus 



PAPYRUS 305 

ran across the page from side to side, and not up and down the 
page from top to bottom. 

One of the things to be considered is the fact that in a 
large city like Rome, even at that early date, the groups of 
Christians will have been somewhat scattered. The Christians 
to whom Paul wrote in this Epistle are evidently for the most 
part not Jewish Christians but heathen Christians, Christians 
who had before that time been heathen. Therefore they will 
not have all been living close together in the Jewish quarter of 
the city, as might have been the case if they had all been born 
Jews. In consequence of this there will have been meetings 
of ten or twenty or fifty who lived near each other on the week- 
day evenings, on Wednesday and Friday as a rule. Now it is 
in every way to be supposed that sometimes Paul's letter was 
carried to one and another of these little meetings, so that it 
could be read, that some passage from it could be read and 
discussed there. We can hear the man who had the roll saying 
to the one who carries it away from him to the little meeting : 
Take care of it. Do not let it be torn. Be sure to bring it 
back in good order. That was very necessary, for papyrus is a 
frail stuff. 

We pass over a year or two and look at our roll. That 
papyrus, as we saw, was made of tape-like strips of vegetable 
fibre laid crosswise, at right angles to each other. When it 
dried, the fibre was, of course, stiffer than when green. The 
members of the church kept the book dry, and the fibres 
will have only grown the more stiff and the more set in their 
ways, in their curled-up way in the roll. The Epistle had to be 
kept dry, for it would have grown mouldy if allowed to be damp, 
and the ink would have been spoiled or printed off on the 
papyrus against the columns. The roll has been unrolled and 
rolled up again. When the reader read the beginning of it and 
went on towards the middle he rolled up with his left hand the 
part he had read, so as to able to hold it well for the further 
reading. When, as must often have happened, the part read 
was well on in the roll, there was quite an amount of unrolling 
with the right hand and rolling up with the left hand to be done 
before the passage was reached. If the roll had been lying still 
in the room of a careful scholar, who only unrolled it at rare 
intervals and then always with great care, it might have lived 
20 



306 the text 

out these two years without much change. Instead of Jthat it 
had been carried to the meetings. It had been often opened 
and re-rolled, and certainly often not with the greatest care. 
Curious people, even the unlearned who could not read, will in 
the small meetings have fingered the roll. There are many 
people, even people who can read and write, who do not think 
they have seen a thing until they have put their fingers on it, 
as if they were blind ; in this way our roll has been felt and 
pinched by many hands. 

Here and there one of the stiff fibres, you might call it 
a tiny stick, has broken when it was rolled up, like a piece 
of wood broken across your knee. Another fibre has broken 
at the edge when somebody pinched it, or perhaps when 
the reader grasped it too firmly while busy rendering the im- 
passioned sentences of Paul. No wonder that the reader forgot 
the papyrus while reading, let us say, what we call the eighth 
chapter of Romans, for Tertius will not have numbered any 
chapters. But it was also no wonder that then those little 
papyrus fibre sticks broke. Papyrus breaks rather than tears. 
Another fibre breaks alongside of the first one, and after a few 
have broken in the direction of the writing, the first thing you 
know some of the up and down fibres break and very soon 
there is a rough hole like a little square or a parallelogram in 
the letter. If that happens in the vacant space between two 
columns of writing, it does not do much harm for the moment. 
If, however, it happens in the middle of a line, then a part of a 
word or even a whole word may be lost, so that the reader will 
have to guess at it from the sense of the rest. 

In time the leading men of the church see that if they 
wish in the years to come to know what the letter contains, 
they must copy it off before it falls altogether to pieces. And 
there may before this time have been another reason for 
copying the Epistle. A Christian from Corinth or Ephesus 
or Alexandria may have been at Rome on business and heard 
of this letter and heard or read it, and then have wished to 
take a copy of it back with him for the church at home. 
Thus in one way or the other the letter comes to be copied 
off for Rome or for another church. The Epistle is written 
again. This time Paul is not dictating, but the man writing 
has a roll before his eyes. And this man writing is not Tertius, 



PAPYRUS 307 

but some one in the church at Rome. He will doubtless 
make some mistakes in copying, but we shall not trouble about 
them at this moment. We wish to know what becomes of 
the original letter. From the point of view of an antiquarian 
or of a relic hunter of to-day, one would say that the papyrus 
roll which Paul had sent to Rome would have been treasured 
most carefully by the church. As a matter of fact, nothing 
of that kind is likely to have happened. 

Let us put the matter down as precisely as possible, remember 
ing all the while that we have no exact knowledge of the details, 
and that the years may be quite different. Paul probably dictated 
Romans to Tertius at Corinth in the year 53 or 54. He was 
probably for the first time a prisoner at Rome about 57 to 59. 
Whether carried a second time as a prisoner to Rome from the 
West or from the East, or whether he was arrested while visiting 
that city, he appears to have died there as a martyr in the year 
64. Considering the frailty of papyrus, it is in every way likely 
that the Epistle was copied off long before the death of Paul. 
Let us, however, give it, the original, a long life, and say that it 
was copied off for the Romans again shortly after Paul's death. 
We heighten thereby the value of that original. Yet we must 
again say, that the original was probably totally neglected so 
soon as the new copy was done. Paul was one of the greatest 
men, was the greatest man, among the Christians in those years. 
But he did not stand in the position that he now does. Further, 
however, so far as we can see, the reverence for relics had not 
yet begun among the Christians. There was enthusiasm and 
zeal, yet they were directed more to the future than to the past. 
The Christian was then bent on doing or on hoping, not upon 
looking back to worthies of the past. We might almost say that 
the gaze of the Church was fixed less upon Jesus of Nazareth 
and more upon Jesus the Prince that was soon to return. The 
original letter written by the hand of Tertius to the Romans was 
probably laid in a corner and soon entirely forgotten. It was 
old and time-worn. Papyrus, if much used, is soon time-worn. 

We have spoken of a letter of Paul's. Of course, the case 
would have been much the same with a letter of James' or 
Peter's or John's or Jude's. It will be clear that in Rome, 
during the time to which we have referred, there may have 
been copies received of one or more of the letters that Paul 



308 THE TEXT 

wrote to churches farther east, just as we supposed that copies 
of Romans might have been made for churches in the East. 
If such letters reached Rome, the leaders of the church will 
probably have kept the various rolls in some one place. Some 
one man is likely to have been charged with the care of them, 
though it would be conceivable that separate persons kept 
separate rolls. It is in no way to be supposed that anyone 
in Rome will have thought of changing any words or cutting 
any out or putting any in, in the original of Paul's letter. So 
long as the original existed and was legible, the church had 
in its hands precisely the words that Paul had dictated to 
Tertius. 

There are, however, in the New Testament, books that are 
not letters. There is, for example, the Revelation, to which 
I am still inclined to attribute an early date. It is a question 
whether or not we should here think of dictation. Were the 
book issued by John in the nineties of the first century, should 
that some day be proved, then we should at once say that 
the old man had dictated it. But if it was written before the 
year seventy, there is more possibility that it should have been 
written directly by the author. Yet that does not matter. 

Whether dictated or whether written by its author, this book 
of Revelation does not seem to have been a book written 
from beginning to end fresh from the brain of the man who 
thought it all out, who imagined the scenes depicted in it. 
It is apparently made upon the basis of a Jewish book. The 
author of the Christian book found that the dreams of the 
Jewish book were good, and he made a Christian introduction, 
an acceptable beginning for the book, and a like ending, and 
he added or took away or rearranged and modified the Jewish 
accounts to suit Christian needs. The Jewish Christians at 
Jerusalem before the year 70 doubtless fulfilled, like James 
and Paul, their religious duty as Jews. They were still good 
Jews although they were Christians. They still looked upon 
Christianity as the normal continuation of Judaism. For them 
Judaism was Christianity. The Jews who were not Christians 
simply failed properly to understand what Judaism was and 
should be. Thus, then, the Christian who published this book 
seems merely to have made an enlarged and corrected and 
re-wrought edition of an existing Jewish book. The book is 



PAPYRUS 309 

not a whit the worse for that. The figures and scenes are as 
vivid and the descriptions are as telling whether first conceived 
by a Jew who was still only an old-fashioned Jew, or by a 
Jew who had become a Christian. So or so this book of visions 
and dreams is written upon a roll of papyrus. 

Tertius wrote Romans for Paul for the Christians at Rome. 
This book of Revelation was written by some one named John 
for seven churches in Asia Minor : Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, 
Thyatira, Sardes, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. It would, of 
course have been possible for John to write but a single copy 
and to send it around to the seven churches like a book 
from a circulating library, leaving it, let us say, four weeks in 
each church, so that in twenty-eight weeks, a little more 
than half a year, all would have had it. The churches are 
not so very far apart. I went with the train from Smyrna to 
Ephesus in 2 J hours and returned in the afternoon. A slow 
little steamer carried me from Smyrna in a few hours to 
Dikeli, from which place I walked during the evening, and, 
after a night on the sand, by seven o'clock the next morning 
to Pergamon. From Pergamon a half a day's walk took me 
to Soma, where a train passing through Thyatira returned 
me to Smyrna in a little more than half a day. The other three 
cities lie only a little to the east of these four. John could 
easily have sent the letter around in a single copy. We might 
think that that was meant by the words in Rev. i 11 "Write 
what you see into a book, and send it to the seven churches." 
And the fact that the letters to the seven churches all follow, 
Rev. 2 1 to 3 22 , might point to the same thing. 

It would be possible to suppose that if a copy were written for 
each church, if seven copies were written, each copy would have 
had but one letter in it, the copy for Ephesus only the letter 
to Ephesus, and so for the other churches. If, however, we 
reflect upon the fact that these letters are not merely letters 
for seven churches, but that they also under the guise of 
the seven churches are directed towards the needs of Christians 
in general and the needs of individual Christians in every 
church, it will, I think, at once appear that it would not occur 
to John to send the book with but a single letter to each church. 
The seven letters are a mosaic pattern of Christian life 
and belong together. No one will imagine, further, that only 



3lO THE TEXT 

those letters and not the book of Revelation were to be sent 
to the churches, for that verse says that John is to write in 
the book what he sees, that is to say, the visions which follow, 
and send it to the churches. The short letters are not visions, 
but messages. And, besides, word would have passed quickly 
from the first church that received the roll, had there been 
but a single one, and the other six churches would not have 
wished to wait for weeks and months to know what was 
addressed to them as well as to that first church. We must 
therefore suppose that John prepared at once seven copies 
of the Revelation and sent one to each church. Should any 
one insist upon it that John as the author merely wrote one 
copy and then left the book to its fate, no one would conceive 
it possible that the seven churches did not have copies made 
at once. 

We therefore are now after this long discussion in a 
different position from that which we held in the case of 
Romans. There we saw at the first and for a while but ■ one 
letter, one book, in the hands of one church. Here we have 
a book in seven copies addressed to seven churches of varying 
moods and characters. The situation is slightly different from 
the point of view of the criticism of the text. For Romans 
there was, so far as we know, for a time but one authentic 
copy which made its definite impression of words and phrases 
and paragraphs upon the minds of the Christians in a large 
city. Many of the Romans will have known very exactly just 
what the Epistle said touching one point and another. Here 
there are seven authentic copies, if John himself sent out the 
seven. And if the churches had the copies made, there are 
almost at once seven copies of the book. That will of itself 
have had perhaps an effect upon the exactness of the text. 
Copying a book looks easy, just as translation seems easy to 
people who know nothing about it. It is difficult to copy a 
common letter of four pages straightway and quickly without 
making a mistake. After one has discovered how easy it is 
to make mistakes in copying, he will be ready to believe that 
it is not beyond the realm of possibility that the text even in 
these first seven copies showed trifling differences. We leave the 
book of Revelation for the moment and turn to other books. 

There remain the four Gospels and the book of Acts. 



PAPYRUS 311 

Matthew, Mark, and Luke with Acts all show in one way a 
certain resemblance in their origin to the book of Revelation. 
Every one of them was written upon the basis of an earlier 
book, or of two or three earlier books. But they all used the 
earlier matter in, it appears, a much more independent way 
than Revelation used its basis. They gave more of their 
own and impressed their personality upon the books more 
decidedly. Mark was doubtless written first. It is the smallest 
of the four books. It may very well have been written at Rome, 
and may also, as ever busy tradition relates, have had some 
connection with recollections of Peter's which he related to 
Mark. Yet if it had such a connection we are nevertheless 
not able to lay our pointer upon the words that depend upon 
Peter's memory. Paul's Epistles were sent to the churches 
here and there, the Revelation was given to the seven churches. 
It would be very interesting to know to whom Mark gave his 
Gospel. Perhaps to the church at Rome. 

But to whomsoever he gave it, it probably met almost at 
once with an accident, a bad accident. I think it most likely 
that in the very first copy of it, which was probably on papyrus, 
the last two or three columns were broken off or torn off or 
cut off and lost. We shall come back to that at another 
place (see pp. 51 1-5 13). 

Matthew's Gospel, or better, the Gospel according to Matthew, 
was written in its current form by someone who had Mark's Gospel 
and perhaps a book by Matthew, and it may be still some other 
book in his hands. He was, this author was, himself by origin an 
ardent Jew, and kept referring to the Old Testament. But that 
does not suffice to tell us where he wrote or to whom he gave his 
Gospel. Perhaps he wrote somewhere in Asia Minor. Asia 
Minor, that Paul had so vigorously missionised, was a stronghold 
of Christianity. Both Mark and Matthew are likely to have 
been at once copied in order to be carried to other churches 
besides the one that first received each. There was nothing 
in either work to limit its address or its use to a single 
community. 

In the case of Luke we find a pleasing personal turn. We 
might say that the author was too modest to offer his work 
to a church or to the Church in general, but ventured to 
send it to his friend Theophilus, always supposing that this friend 



312 THE TEXT 

the God-Lover or the one Loved-of-God was not a roundabout 
address to any and every good Christian. Luke is so evidently 
a skilled writer, that we must suppose him to have caused his 
book to be copied a number of times in spite of the address 
to a private person. Where he first issued it we do not know. 
The former suggestion of Asia Minor for Matthew might very 
well also be made for Luke. The book of Acts Luke wrote 
doubtless a few years later. Now the three former -books were 
crystallisations of the gospel that was preached. They are 
connected with each other through their basis, through the 
writings used in their composition, so that they in general place 
before our eyes the same phase of and largely the same incidents 
in the life of Jesus and the same words of Jesus, and they 
therefore support each other. The churches of the latter 
part of the first century that learned of the existence of these 
Gospels will have desired to have them, so far as their means 
permitted them to buy the rolls. We are forced to suppose 
that they were often copied and were sent hither and thither 
among the churches, and in particular to the churches near 
the place at which they first appeared, and to the churches in 
the chief cities. These larger churches both heard more quickly 
by means of the frequent travellers of the issue of new books, 
and were more capable of paying for good copies of them. 

It seems to me not to be reasonable to suppose that these books 
lived a retired, violet like existence, remaining long unknown 
to the mass of the churches. It does not seem to me to agree 
with the first principles of scientific hypothesis to imagine that 
these Gospels did not exist in towns from which we have received 
no treatise quoting them. We cannot look for inscriptions for 
every town in which Christians had Christian books, giving 
every ten years from 70 to 200 the catalogue of those at 
command. That means for textual criticism that we must 
assume before the end of the first century the widespread 
existence of a number of copies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 
The interest in the book of Acts will have been by no means 
so great as the interest in the Gospels, and it will not have 
been copied anything like so often. 

The Gospel of John stands by itself. The question as to 
its author cannot here be treated at length. I am of the opinion 
either that John the Twelve-Apostle dictated it to a disciple 



PAPYRUS 3 I 3 

shortly before his death, or that some such disciple who had 
been most intimately allied to John wrote the Gospel soon after 
the death of the apostle. Now it is interesting to observe that 
in this case we have a tradition that upon the face of it does 
not look improbable. Tradition says that John dictated the 
Gospel to a disciple of his named Prochorus. We see this 
tradition given pictorially in a clear way in many a manuscript 
containing this Gospel. In one of the upper corners, usually 
in the one at the right hand of the picture, either a hand or rays 
come forth from a cloud to indicate the presence and activity 
of the Divine Spirit. John stands before us raising his left hand 
towards that divine manifestation in order to receive the heavenly 
inspiration, and stretching his right hand down toward Prochorus, 
who is seated at the left hand and writing the Gospel : " In the 
beginning was the Word." There is nothing like this that often 
occurs in the manuscripts for the other evangelists. I know 
of nothing thus far that should make it more impossible for 
Prochorus to have written the Fourth Gospel at John's dictation 
than for Tertius to have written Romans at Paul's dictation. 
But we have no positive knowledge of the fact. 

This Gospel has, further, another peculiarity in reference to its 
authorship, for it contains at the close one (or two) verses evidently 
added by another hand. John 21' 24 (and 25 ) look as if they had 
been added by the chief men in the church which first received 
this Gospel. In modern phrase, these would be the elders or 
the clergy of the church in which John worshipped. In the 
verses before these the Twelve-Apostle John has been mentioned 
as the disciple whom Jesus loved, about whom Peter asked. 
Thereupon the twenty-fourth verse adds : " This is the disciple 
who testifies touching these things, and who wrote these things : 
and we know that his testimony is true." The twenty-fifth verse 
says : " And there are many other things which Jesus did, which, 
if they were written one by one, I do not think that the world 
itself would hold the books written." Now this verse might 
be from John. That twenty-fourth verse might have been 
originally added by the elders at the side of the column near 
v. 23 and then have been put into the column itself before 
v. 25 by a later scribe. Those words are almost like a receipt 
for the Gospel on the part of the community. For textual 
criticism this declaration gives in a way a surety for careful 



314 THE TEXT 

attention to the words of the Gospel in that first church. We 
shall find that the text of this Gospel is in some ways in better 
condition than that of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, because it 
stood alone, and because it was not so much dependent upon 
written sources. 

Ancient Handwriting. 

It is not uninteresting to ask what kind of writing was probably 
used in the first copies of those New Testament books. At 
that time the main kinds of handwriting were two : uncial 
writing and cursive writing. We could call them capitals and a 
running hand. The capitals were used for books that were well 
gotten up, for fine editions. In such books the words were all 
written in capital letters, word joined on to word without break, 
much as if we were to WRITEINENGLISHTHUS. It was 
then easy enough to tell what the letters were, but it required a 
quick eye and a good head to tell quickly at some places just 
how the words were to be divided off, what belonged together 
and what was to be separated. At the first moment a Christian, 
thinking of the pretty editions of the Bible that we have, would 
say that Tertius when he wrote Paul's letter to the Romans must 
surely have used these large and fine letters. But those who know 
what people at that day were likely to write would say no. That 
was a letter that Tertius was writing, even if it was a very large 
letter. It was an essay, a treatise, an article ; but it was the 
habit then, as it often has been since, upon occasion to write 
such an essay in the form of a letter. And such a letter would 
not be written in the formal stiff capitals, but in the running hand. 
A running hand was just what the name says, handwriting written 
at a run, written in a hurry, as so many people write to-day. The 
letters were at first, we might say, just like those capital letters. 
But the swiftness of the strokes had impaired the form of the 
letters. If we look at many a handwriting that we see to-day and 
ask how much a d or an m or a u looks like the printed form of 
those letters or like the forms given in copy-books, we may 
understand that in the same way the writing that Tertius wrote 
in all probability contained many strange looking letters. The 
letters will often have been written close together, and all joined 
together without respect to the division between words. We 



PAPYRUS 315 

cannot at all tell how well Tertius was able to write. We do not 
know whether he wrote a clear hand or whether he wrote a bad 
hand. The chances are that he wrote well. That is, it may be, 
the reason why he, and not Timothy or Lucius or Jason or 
Sosipater, who were all there at the time, was asked to do the 
writing. 

From what we have already seen, it is clear that we cannot 
look for the originals of the books of the New Testament among 
the books of our libraries. One could dream of possibilities. 
We might fancy that one of the little letters of John had been 
slipped into some box or laid away in a diptych, a little double 
wax tablet like two slates hinged together, and that the box or 
the diptych was to be discovered to-morrow by the Austrian 
scholar who is unearthing Ephesus. But there is not the least 
likelihood of anything of that kind. The probability is that every 
vestige of the original writings had vanished long before the time 
of Eusebius, the most of the writings before the year 200, and 
many of them before the year 100. A knavish fellow brought 
some leaves of papyrus to England more than forty years ago 
and sold them to an English merchant who trusted his word for 
it that they were out of the original Matthew and the original 
James and the original Jude. The material really was papyrus. 
There was upon the leaves a real writing of a late century that 
had nothing to do with the times of the New Testament. And 
then there were some big but rather dim letters upon the papyrus 
containing passages from Matthew and James and Jude, and 
the rascal who sold them declared that these passages were a 
previous writing on the papyrus, and had been written in the first 
century of our era by those three authors. It was not strange 
that the rich man who believed this paid a large sum to gain 
possession of such wonderful treasures. When, however, the 
experts came to examine the leaves they saw at once that the 
pretended old writing was a mere piece of cheating. They could 
clearly see that this writing, which was alleged to be of the first 
century, had not at all been written at first upon the papyrus, 
before that very much younger writing, but that it was on top of 
the writing centuries younger. That man had written it there 
himself to make money He was really a very learned man, and 
it was a great pity that he in this as in some other cases proved 
untrustworthy. We cannot expect to find remains of the original 



316 THE TEXT 

copies of the books of the New Testament. God did not hand 
these books down from heaven. He caused men to write them. 
And when each book had lived its day He allowed it to vanish 
away like other frail human fabrics. He did not have regard to 
the letter but to the spirit, not to the outside of the book or the 
roll but to the inside of it in the inward sense, not to something 
perishable but to something eternal. 



Z l 7 



II. 

PARCHMENT. 

We saw that at Rome the time had come at which the leaders of 
the Christians there were persuaded that if they did not wish to 
lose the letter of Paul to them they must have it copied. The 
question that now arises refers to the way in which it was copied. 
If the church had been a poor little group of men who could only 
with great difficulty scrape together a small amount of money, the 
new letter would have been to all intents and purposes the 
counterpart of the old letter. It would have been written on 
papyrus again and in a running hand. It would have been written 
upon papyrus because that was the common writing material, the 
paper, of that day, whether at Alexandria or at Antioch or at 
Rome. If a man put a handbill up at Rome, he wrote it on a 
big piece of coarse papyrus. If he wrote a delicate note to his 
wife or his mother, he wrote it on a little piece of fine papyrus. 
Papyrus was their paper. 

But I do not think it is probable that the Romans caused 
this Epistle to be copied on papyrus. The church at Rome 
had then many members. It was perhaps the largest and most 
wealthy Christian community in existence. If any church could 
afford to have a nice book written, it was the church at Rome. 
It was not a mere matter of pride or luxury, however, and not 
merely the desire, the very proper desire, to do honour to a 
letter of the Apostle Paul, that was calculated to lead them 
not to use papyrus. The papyrus was not very durable : we have 
seen why it was not. As time went on the Christians must 
have felt that they could depend less upon the immediate return 
of Jesus, that they must arrange the Church and its belongings 
for a longer stay in this wicked world. They still wrote as we 
saw above in the letter of Clement : " The church living in this 
foreign world at Rome," and they still looked to heaven as their 
real home. Yet they began to treat themselves more calmly, to 
make themselves more "at home" here. That meant for the 



318 THE TEXT 

books of the New Testament that they must put them upon the 
most durable book-material that they could find. 

Now they might have had them written on leather. The Jews 
in ancient times often had their sacred books on leather. Leather 
is, however, not very nice for books. It is too thick and too 
heavy and too dark-coloured. The written words are soon not 
much blacker than the leather itself. There is something better 
than leather, and that is parchment. Parchment is called in Greek 
" pergamini " after the city Pergamus where it is said to have been 
invented. I suppose it was merely very well made there, so that 
the name of the city was given to the best kind. To make 
parchment, usually sheepskins or goatskins or calfskins are used. 
The skin is stretched out tight and dried, and then scraped off on 
both sides and then rubbed with chalk. In the East I am in- 
clined to think that goatskins are most frequently used, when 
they can be had. They are better than sheepskins, because there 
is not so much oily matter in them. We shall return to parch- 
ment again and tell more about it. 

Probably the Romans had Paul's letter copied off on to a 
parchment roll. Now they knew how long it was, and they 
could tell how long the roll must be. The textual critic must 
know all about book-making, not for races but for literature. We 
are at Rome. In this great city there were plenty of well- 
trained scribes. It is quite likely that some scribes had already 
become Christians. If not, there would be Christians who 
knew scribes upon whom they could rely, who would treat the 
Christian books carefully. The scribes were paid according to 
the amount of writing of course, and they often gave the measure 
of a book at the end of it. Then the man who had ordered 
the book would know how much he had to pay. And if any- 
one wished for a new copy he could at once tell the scribe how 
long it was, and learn the price. In England and America a 
printer who sets up a book is paid by the number of ms, which 
are called ems, because m is square and therefore makes a good 
measure. The Greek scribes were paid by the " line," called a 
stichos. It would never have done to leave the measuring " line " 
to vary according to the book. Therefore once for all, for all 
kinds of books, whether sacred or profane, whether prose or 
poetry, a line that was about as long as a line or verse of Homer, 
a hexameter line, was used. Such a line contains about thirty-six 



PARCHMENT 319 

letters on an average. If a trained scribe were summoned to 
write Romans off, he would count the number of lines and then 
write them down at the end of the Epistle. If the Epistle has 
remained just as he had it before him, he must have written " nine 
hundred and twenty or fifty lines" or thereabouts. And this 
trained scribe will now probably not have used the running hand 
for his work. The Epistle was no longer a letter that someone 
wrote here and sent thither. It was a little book that these 
Christians wished to keep and read. The scribe wrote it doubt- 
less in pretty capital letters, in comparatively narrow columns. 
That would be much clearer and easier to read, whether in 
private or in the meetings in church. The scribe we shall 
assume wrote the Epistle anew. If some simple Christian who 
could only write the running hand really wrote it off the first time, 
then the trained scribe came later. He came. He could not 
but come, so soon as the church wished for a pretty copy. 

We must here mention another matter in passing, something 
also connected with book-making. There is one of the most 
interesting problems in the realm of New Testament research 
that attaches to the last two chapters of the Epistle to the Romans. 
The problem itself belongs rather to the criticism of the books 
than to the criticism of the text. But one or two of the solutions 
of the problem rest upon a possibility in textual criticism, upon a 
possibility in the copying off of books. For my own part I am 
inclined to accept in the case of these two chapters, and I may 
say especially in the case of the last, the sixteenth chapter, a 
solution which belongs precisely at this point, at which we are 
leaving the original letter as Tertius wrote it and passing on to a 
new copy written by an unknown scribe. Here we must be short. 
It is not impossible that Romans at first closed with chapter 
fourteen. If that was the case, then these two other chapters 
were probably written separately by Paul, and at Rome placed for 
good keeping in the roll of Romans. It must not be forgotten 
that, among the accidents which occasionally happened to papyrus 
rolls, the tearing across the whole roll sometimes took place. 
This circumstance would make it easy for a scribe to suppose on 
finding a couple of loose pieces that they were a part of the 
Epistle. He may even have thought that the original author of 
the Epistle had written, or dictated, them and laid them in the 
roll without taking the trouble or having the paste to stick them 



320 THE TEXT 

on to the end of the roll. It is, however, not even positively 
necessary to imagine a misunderstanding of that kind. It could 
have been done in all honesty and of set purpose. 

Let us go back to Rome. The leader of the church who 
handed the roll to the scribe may have known very well that 
the pieces of papyrus, on which what we call the fifteenth 
and sixteenth chapters were written, had been received by 
the church apart from Romans. But he may have said : " Here 
are these two short communications from Paul. If I leave them 
lying around they will soon be lost. The best thing will be 
to write them into the new roll at the end of Romans. Here, 
scribe, copy these at the end of the roll. They are from Paul 
too." A Christian could then very well have spoken and acted 
thus. That would have been for him a thoroughly practical 
and perfectly proper way of disposing of such small letters. It 
was no forgery. Paul had written it all. And this Christian 
did not for a moment think of the critics in coming centuries 
who would rack their brains to discover what was the matter 
with these chapters. And even from the advanced standpoint of 
to-day we must confess that if this really be the state of affairs 
it does* not do the least harm. No one's salvation, and I think 
no one's peace of mind, depends upon our knowing just how 
these chapters came to stand where they do (see pp. 521-526). 

We have now reached the point at which Romans has been 
copied off in a literary hand on parchment. We pass over a 
few years. It is not easy to say just how many. The church 
at Rome has one by one at last come into possession of a number 
of the Epistles of Paul. Many or all of them may have reached 
Rome on the cheaper paper, papyrus, and written in the common 
running hand. It is not impossible that the church caused 
them some day to be copied together into one large roll. In 
like manner the four Gospels were at first on separate rolls and 
may later have been put into one roll. 

We have fastened our gaze on Rome. There we have the 
most favourable conditions possible for the careful preservation 
of the books and for their re-copying whenever it may be 
desirable. At Corinth, at Smyrna, at Antioch, at Alexandria 
the general conditions for Christian books are not so very 
different from those found in Rome. Every one of these cities 
had a prosperous church, and that church was, like the one at 



PARCHMENT 32 1 

Rome, Greek, and used the New Testament in its original 
language. Such large churches were, we may be sure, the first 
to gather the books together. In smaller towns and in the 
villages, so far as Christianity had reached them, the circum- 
stances were in many varying degrees different from those in the 
cities named. The cities that any of the Twelve-Apostles or that 
Paul had visited were in name and certainly to a large extent in 
fact ahead of the others, particularly those to which the apostles 
had written Epistles. They prided themselves on their distinction, 
and the other towns looked up to them with feelings akin to 
envy. In the villages the number of New Testament books at 
command must long have remained minimal. Often the copy of 
an Epistle or of a Gospel that a preacher brought with him from 
a neighbouring town, in order to read from it during the Sunday 
service, may have been the only such book that the Christians 
there saw from one week to another. In some cases we may 
hold it likely that the village churches received old and damaged 
rolls which the city churches had cast aside on securing new and 
better copies, precisely as it sometimes to-day happens that 
city churches send old Bibles or hymn-books or prayer-books 
to churches on the frontiers of civilisation. In other cases it is 
sure to have come to pass that Christians who could write but 
a very poor script succeeded in borrowing a roll and in copying 
a book for their town or village. 

There was no standstill in all this. Everything was moving • 
on. The mind's eye might have seen the books gradually 
going out and gradually multiplying from place to place like 
the leaven going through the lump, like a lichen spreading over 
a rock, like an ivy covering a wall. To this slight sketch of 
the growth in the number of the manuscripts of the books 
of the New Testament nothing need be added until the fourth 
century. There came now and then indeed, sad to say, times 
of reverse. A governor of a province or the ruler of a city 
occasionally took it into his head to check the progress of 
Christian effort by forcing the Christians under him to give up 
to him the writings which they so much cherished. The various 
cases differed much from each other. Sometimes they were told 
to bring their books, and the officials did not scrutinise the 
number or the character of the books handed over. In other 
places the officials rudely demanded all books, and searched 
21 



322 THE TEXT 

every nook and corner to find them. Yet in spite of such 
reverses the word was sowed broadcast. Such times of reverse 
served to sieve out the nominal Christians from the real 
Christians, the lovers of and the doers of the word from those 
who only " heard " it. 

Leaf-Books. 

As we approach the fourth century I must describe a theory 
of mine. It is a mere theory, a hypothesis, a fancy as to what 
may have happened. Should we some day or other come to 
know the facts, they will perhaps not agree with the theory at 
all. For the moment, however, the facts lie hidden and the 
theory may boldly stalk abroad. We have already remarked 
that the books in the times of which we have spoken were not 
leaf books, not squares or parallelograms an inch or a few inches 
thick with a number of leaves to be turned over, but were rolls. 
At the close of the fourth century the books appear to have been 
almost altogether leaf-books, at least that is my impression. We 
do not yet know at what precise moment the change from rolls 
to leaf-books was made. It was a great change. How different 
a library of rolls would look from a library of leaf-books ! How 
much more easy it is to hold, to read, to find anything in a leaf- 
book from what it is to hold a roll, to read it, or to find anything 
in it ! At present, with all that I have heard and seen, I am 
inclined to think that this change was made about the end 
of the third or the beginning of the fourth century, or ± 300. 
We do not know. That is the best guess I can now make. A 
new papyrus may to-morrow show that the change came earlier. 

The theory touches the person or persons who made this 
change, who invented leaf-books. I am ready to believe that leaf- 
books are due to a Christian ; that a Christian was the first one who 
felt the need of a change, and who effected the change. The reason 
for the theory is this. No one had such need as the Christian 
to seek different passages in great numbers in widely separated 
places in large books. There were several classes of scholars. 
There were heathen classical scholars, who had a comparatively 
limited library of Greek and Latin works, among which Plato and 
Aristotle were perhaps with Homer the ones represented by the 
largest number of rolls. There were Jewish philosophers and 



PARCHMENT 325 

Jewish rabbis who both dealt with the Old Testament books, the 
philosophers also using the writings of the classical world. And 
finally appeared our latest generation the Christians, who knew 
and used the writings of the classical world, and who were com- 
pelled in debate with Jews and with heathen and with Christians 
to turn swiftly from Genesis to Revelation, from First John to 
Daniel, from Isaiah to Paul. No others needed to turn to so 
many books and so quickly. Here is the hold for the theory. 
I think this difficulty may have brought some Christian scholar, 
proceeding from the heathen diptychs or double wax tablets, to 
suggest or to prepare leaf -books, I am further ready to believe 
that two old manuscripts of the Bible, which we have now in 
Europe, were among the earlier leaf-books. 



Sides of Parchment. 

Now, however, that we are coming to the leaf-books we must 
mention another thing. Parchment has two sides. It is skin. 
It has a side that was on the outside of the animal and was 
covered with goat's hair or sheep's wool. And it has a side that 
was against the flesh, that covered the ribs. We may call them 
the hair side and the flesh side. The hair side is in comparison 
with the flesh side of a darker shade, and when the parchment 
grows old the difference in colour is more clearly visible, 
particularly in parchment made out of sheepskin. In the second 
place, the hair side is rougher than the flesh side. This difference 
is often very slight, but it is usually there. Once I was speaking 
with a parchment maker, and I asked him which side of a certain 
piece of fine parchment was which. He said he could not tell with- 
out a careful examination. I took hold of it and said to him what 
I thought the sides were, and it proved when he examined it that 
I had felt right. The parchment maker had never tried to tell 
the sides by feeling. That was not of the least use in his 
business. But I had for years been feeling parchment leaves 
just for this purpose. I do not doubt that some parchments 
would be too fine to be thus distinguished by feeling, but I am 
not sure. I question whether I could feel the difference between 
the sides in the great Vatican manuscript j I cannot remember 
about it as to this point. In the third place, the hair side is not 



324 THE TEXT 

only darker and rougher, but it is also more thirsty than the flesh 
side, and it drinks up the ink much more eagerly and drinks it 
in more thoroughly. The result is that if a manuscript has 
grown old and the leaves have been much rubbed against each 
other or rubbed by men's hands, the writing on the flesh side 
may in the places that have been most rubbed vanish away 
completely so that no vestige of the letters can be seen. On the 
hair side, on the contrary, the ink sinks in so deep into the pores 
of the skin that it is often no easy matter for a scribe to erase a 
word on it with his knife. 

The reason we have to speak of the sides of the parchment is 
this : the quires are made according to a certain law. Even if it be 
not important, I like to tell about this law because I discovered 
it. A quire in a Greek manuscript of respectable family consists, 
like a quire in an ordinary modern octavo printed book, of four 
double leaves or eight single leaves. It is called a four-er, and 
the name usual is a quaternion ; but those ten Latin letters say 
no more than the six Saxon letters : fourer, only you must know 
that the latter word comes from four or else you will not pro- 
nounce it right. And these eight leaves must begin with a flesh 
side and end with a flesh side, and there must be two flesh sides 
in the middle of the quire, and every two pages that open out 
together must both be flesh sides or both be hair sides. If a 
man does not know the law, he is likely to make a poor manu- 
script. But infringements of the rule that the sides, the pages, 
that come together must be both alike are rare. We have at 
Leipzig a small manuscript made without regard to this law, and 
it looks ugly, ill-bred, and generally disreputable. If a roll be 
made of parchment, the flesh side must be the inside of the roll, 
the side that receives the writing. For it is the most beautiful 
side, makes the best appearance, even if it does not retain the ink 
so well. 

It is further to be remarked that if a Greek manuscript does 
not observe the above law as to the number of leaves in the 
quire, if instead of being a fourer it be a fiver, a quinio (not, as 
the books often write, a quinternio), made of five double leaves 
and therefore having twenty pages, or have any other number 
of leaves regularly in the quires, then it is not of pure Greek 
origin. This conclusion is especially justified if the manuscript 
be well gotten up, like that great Vatican manuscript which was 



PARCHMENT 325 

mentioned a moment ago, and which shows others signs of a non- 
Grecian descent. Indeed we can take up that very point pre- 
cisely here. That beautiful manuscript has very old leaf- 
numbers. That is not Greek. Greek manuscripts do not 
number their leaves. A Greek manuscript numbers only its 
quires. If one happens to find numbers for the leaves in a 
Greek manuscript, that is to say numbers that belong to ancient 
times, that have not been put in in the West and in the fifteenth 
to the twentieth century, he may be sure that a stranger has 
written them in. 

Parchment, to go back to the material written on, is of different 
thicknesses, just as paper is. But it is not possible, as I used to 
think it was, for the parchment makers to pare down or grind off 
or do anything else to make the parchment thinner. A certain 
skin, every skin, has its body of parchment, if the expression is 
intelligible. The sharp scrapers of the workmen go just so far 
and not farther. If they go beyond the proper point the skin is 
spoiled. Therefore a fine thin parchment can only be made 
from a thin skin, and that thin skin can only be a young skin. 
To go at once to the greatest extreme known to me, there is in 
the City Library at Leipzig a manuscript of the Latin Bible 
written upon parchment made from the skin of unborn lambs. 
It is exquisite parchment, and thinner than most thin papers are, 
I should think. On the other hand, we sometimes see parchment 
that is very thick and stiff, almost like so much pasteboard. 

Parchment was really necessary for the leaf-books as contrasted 
with papyrus or with leather. If a leaf-book were made out of 
leather, the leaves would be likely to curl over at the top when 
the book was opened upon the reading-desk. The parchment 
leaves are usually more stiff and lie or stand well. Papyrus 
would have given no trouble in this respect, for it was stiff enough. 
But it is at once clear that papyrus with those little fibres so 
easily broken would not be fitted to stand the opening and 
shutting and the turning over of the leaves, but must if much 
used soon go to pieces. Parchment was, on the contrary, very 
durable, and could be bent and used at will. Reasonable use of 
a parchment book has no appreciable effect upon its condition 
during long years. The defects in parchment manuscripts are 
sometimes due to rough usage on the part of those who read 
them, but they are usually due to outrageous treatment on the 



326 THE TEXT 

part of ignorant people who have thrown them about and trodden 
on them and torn them. Good parchment was. I think, dearer 
than papyrus, but it was much more beautiful and indefinitely 
more durable, and when the rolls were exchanged for leaf-books 
the day of papyrus for literature began to wane. 



Constahtine's Manuscripts. 

We now take our stand in the fourth century", and Christianity 
had up to the fourth century been growing apace in spite of all 
efforts to repress it. At last an emperor determined to be a 
Christian. There are people who think that this emperor, 
Constantine, took up Christianity rather as a matter of business 
than as a matter of religion, that it was State policy and not 
devotional feeling that guided his steps. Be that as it may, it 
is not easy for us after nearly sixteen centuries to go back to 
the city which he renamed after himself as Constantine"s City, 
Constantinople, and try his heart and reins : and he did his 
royal duty towards the Bible at least in one case. It was in the 
year 331. Eusebius, the bishop of Csesarea in Palestine, was a 
very learned man, a great book man, and an active prelate. He 
wrote a life of Constantine in which he displayed no little skill 
as a flatterer. In that year. 331, as Eusebius tells us in this life, 
Constantine conceived the idea of making a great present to the 
chief churches near him. He wrote to Eusebius about it for 
Eusebius was not only very learned, but he was also the bishop 
of the city with the most celebrated Christian library. I like to 
think that that library contained many of Origen's own personal 
books, for he lived and taught there for years. Constantine 
knew then that first-class biblical manuscripts were there, and 
first-class scribes to copy new ones. He told Eusebius to have 
fifty fine copies of the Bible made, and to send them to him at 
Constantinople. He promised even to reward handsomely the 
deacon whom he asked Eusebius to send to Constantinople as 
a guard for the costly manuscripts on the long journey. It would 
be very nice if we could find some of those manuscripts. 

Unfortunately Eusebius knew nothing of the burning wishes 
of textual critics in the twentieth century, and did not describe 
these manuscripts in detail. He told just one thing about them, 



PARCHMENT 327 

and we, alas ! do not know what his words mean. We can only 
guess at their meaning. He says that he wrote them by threes 
and fours, or " three-wise and four-wise." Eusebius knew what 
he meant. Would that we did. This must have been a 
technical expression in making books. Some scholars have 
thought that Eusebius referred to the quires, and that he said 
that he had written them on quires of three double leaves and 
on quires of four double leaves, on ternions and quaternions. 
This suggestion does not commend itself to me, for two reasons. 
In the first place, so far as we know, no Greek manuscript was 
ever made up in quires of three double leaves. We have seen 
that the rule was four double leaves. And, in the second place, 
the quires and the number of leaves in the quires are things 
that do not strike the eye when a man looks at a book. If a 
man to-day takes up an uncut printed book he may see the 
quires in a certain individuality, but even thus the number of 
leaves in a quire does not impress itself upon him unless he directs 
his mind to that point. But the Greek manuscripts were never 
uncut, and the moment a volume was bound, the man who 
opened it at hazard would in no way be forced to see how 
many leaves there happened to be in the quires. My theory 
about it is that " by threes and fours " attaches to the number 
of columns on a page. If a man opens a book he cannot help 
seeing instantly whether the page before his eyes has one or two 
or three or four columns. I think that Eusebius meant to say 
or did say by those mystic words that he had the fifty Bibles 
written in pages of three columns and in pages of four 
columns. 

It is a practical reason that leads me to this theory. If I am 
not mistaken, we have one or two of these manuscripts to-day in 
our hands, or, to put it still more tentatively, we have one or two 
manuscripts that may as well as not have been among these 
fifty that were sent to Constantine from Caesarea by Eusebius. 
We have two manuscripts of the Bible written in large part, one 
in four, the other in three columns. The poetical books of the 
Old Testament do not count, because they had to be written in 
two columns on account of their verses. And these two 
manuscripts are palaeographically and theologically apparently 
to be referred to the fourth century. Perhaps they made that 
journey with the deacon from Caesarea to Constantinople. No 



328 THE TEXT 

record is known of the churches to which Constantine gave the 
new Bibles. Those in Constantinople itself probably got the 
greater part of them, since Constantine mentioned them in 
writing to Eusebius. Yet he may have sent one or another to 
a more distant church of importance in order to honour the 
bishop who presided over it. 



3 2 9 



III. 

LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS. 

The Codex Sinaiticus. 

The manuscript written in four columns is the Codex Sinaiticus, 
known by the Hebrew letter Aleph X, and we now turn our 
attention to it. In the year 1844, Constantine Tischendorf, 
a privatdozent then in the university at Leipzig, visited the 
monastery of St. Catharine at Mount Sinai. While there he 
found in a waste basket forty-three leaves of an old manu- 
script, and the monks let him have them. He also saw 
some more leaves that they refused to give him, but he copied 
one of them off. People have sometimes derided the story of 
his finding the leaves in waste basket. They did not know how 
manuscripts used to be treated in the East. These forty-three 
leaves Tischendorf brought to Leipzig and named them the 
Codex Friderico-Augustanus, after the King of Saxony, Frederick 
Augustus. These leaves contain parts of the Old Testament. Of 
course, Tischendorf did not say where he had found them, for he 
wished to return and get the other leaves. Nine years later he 
returned to the monastery, in the year 1853, but he only found a 
fragment of Genesis. He thought that someone else had secured 
the remainder. As, however, several years passed by and no one 
published the text of any such manuscript, he again went to 
Mount Sinai in the year 1859 to look for it. 

He spent some days there but could not find it. He had 
already ordered the camels to be ready to take him away upon the 
following morning. The great steward of the monastery asked him 
to come into his room to pay him a visit. While he was sitting 
there the steward took down from the shelf some old leaves that 
he had lying there and showed them to him. He saw at once that 
this was just what he had been looking for all these years, save that 
there was much more of it than he had supposed to exist. That 
was not a disagreeable difference. The steward let Tischendorf 



330 THE TEXT 

take it to his room, and he found that it contained the whole of the 
New Testament, much of the Old Testament, and the letter of 
Barnabas, which up to that time was not known in Greek, and 
the Shepherd of Hermas. He spent the night copying the letter 
of Barnabas, for he did not know whether he should ever see 
the manuscript after the next morning, and he thought it a 
duty to Christendom to secure the original text of this letter. 
The next morning Tischendorf tried to get the monks to let him 
have the manuscript. They voted upon it, but there was a 
majority of one against him, so that he could not have it. 
Thereupon he left the monastery and returned to Cairo, where 
the monks of Sinai have also a small monastery. 

We see now how absurd it is when people say that Tischendorf 
took the manuscript away from the monastery by stealth. For he 
did not take it away from the monastery at all. He went away from 
the monastery and left it there. At Cairo the head monk sent an 
Arab sheik to Mount Sinai to bring the manuscript to Cairo. 
The sheik brought it and gave it to the monks, not to Tischendorf. 
Tischendorf had a conference with the monks, and it was agreed 
that they should let him have it quire by quire to copy off. He 
was to give a receipt for eight leaves, the four double leaves of 
the fourer, the quaternio, and when he brought them back he 
was to have the next eight. Two Germans who happened to 
be at Cairo, an apothecary and a bookseller, helped him copy, 
and Tischendorf revised most carefully what they copied. Just 
then the highest place of authority among the monks of Sinai 
was vacant. The monks did not feel as if they could dispose of 
the manuscript until they had a new abbot. The abbot has the 
title of archbishop. The election took a great deal of time. In 
between Tischendorf went to Palestine. He had discovered 
the manuscript on the 4th of February 1859, and it was not 
until the 28th of September of the same year that it was 
placed in his hands. 

So far removed were the facts from the favourite description 
of Tischendorfs envyers, who think that he slipped it into 
his breast-pocket in February ar\d vanished unseen from the 
monastery. Try to slip into your pocket unseen three hundred 
and forty-six leaves of parchment which are forty-three centi- 
metres long and thirty-seven centimetres broad. But besides 
that, on the 28th of September 1859 Tischendorf did not 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 33 1 

take it away from the monks at Cairo by stealth, with or with- 
out the necessary and necessarily gigantic breast-pocket. For 
it was given to him in all due form by the head monk in the 
presence of the others who were at Cairo, and in the presence 
of the Russian consul, who, of course, made an official minute 
of the whole proceedings. The monks delivered over the manu- 
script to Tischendorf in order that he should take it to Leipzig 
and publish it, and then present it to the Russian emperor in 
the name of the monks. 

According to Western habits in reference to presents, that 
would be enough. If the monks sent it as a present to the 
emperor, very well. That is the end of the thing. But we know 
from the Bible that in the East a gift demands a return, and that 
this return may under given circumstances be extraordinarily like 
a good round price paid for the nominal gift. The twenty-third 
chapter of Genesis shows us how Ephron gave Abraham the field 
with the double cave in it as a family tomb, but Abraham paid 
him four hundred ounces of silver for it nevertheless. After 
Tischendorf had published the manuscript he carried it to Russia 
according to the bargain, and gave it to the Czar at Zarskoe Selo 
on the 10th of November, in Russian the 29th of October, 1862. 
But the Russian emperor, who had such a number of Eastern 
peoples under his rule, knew all about " presents " from the 
East, and it did not occur to him to put this manuscript into his 
library before he had arranged for the return present. Instead 
of that he sent it to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so 
that it might remain as a foreign object until the necessary 
business arrangements had been made. At that time the journey 
from St. Petersburg to Mount Sinai was not so easy as it is 
to-day, and consumed much more time. Further, it used to be 
the case — modern diplomacy has doubtless more speedy methods 
— that diplomatic agents moved very slowly, took things up 
slowly, wrote and copied letters slowly, and sent them away most 
slowly of all. And, on the other hand, the monks of the East 
can far outdo all diplomatists in slow movement. An Eastern 
monk thinks he is doing an enormous day's work if within 
twenty-four hours he does as much as an ordinary European 
would do in twenty minutes. 

In consequence of this it was not until the year 1869 that 
the business was brought to an end, and the manuscript was 



332 THE TEXT 

carried from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and placed in 
the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, where it now is. We 
must be very precise in all this, because it is constantly said, 
and has more than once been printed, that Tischendorf or 
the Russian Government promised to pay for the manuscript, 
but finally did not do so. Sometimes the narrative takes the 
dramatic form that a sum was offered but indignantly refused, 
and that the monks demanded the return of the manuscript. 
That is all wide of the mark. The business was regularly brought 
to a business-like close. 

The monks at Mount Sinai received seven thousand rubles 
and the monks at Cairo received two thousand rubles, say six 
thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars, or more than thirteen 
hundred and fifty pounds sterling. That was for that time a 
high price to pay for the manuscript. So far from refusing to 
take the money, the monks took it and gave receipts for it 
which are in the hands of the Russian Government. And that 
was not all. The decorations referred to above are valued in 
the East even more highly than they are in the decoration-loving 
circles in Western Europe, and the monks received a number 
of these decorations. 

The explanation for the fact that the monks give such totally 
incorrect accounts of the acquisition of this manuscript by Tischen- 
dorf, or to put it differently, of the gift of this manuscript to the 
Emperor of Russia, is to be found, I think, in two circumstances. 
On the one hand, as I found during a stay of eight weeks at 
Mount Sinai, there does not appear to be a shadow of anything 
like what may be called a firm and interested tradition in the 
monastery. The history of the monastery, apart from one or 
two general statements for the benefit of visiting pilgrims, did 
not seem to have any charm for the monks. It was of no 
importance to them that I noted in the history of the monastery 
occasional points, dates which I found in manuscripts. The 
result of this is that no one in the monastery, as far as I could 
find, had the least knowledge of what had passed the forty and 
odd years ago when Tischendorf was there. On the other hand, 
not clashing in the least with the foregoing, the monks think 
over the matter for themselves, connecting it with what they 
hear, but do not understand, about the value of the manuscript, 
and then project their fancy, as to what they from their present 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 333 

standpoint would do if the case were presented to them, into the 
past. Hereupon they assert with all the nai'veness of ignorance 
that their predecessors did this and that, which in fact they did 
not do at all. 

This manuscript is in its appearance, when it is thrown open, 
much like a piece of an old roll. If someone could give us 
eighty-six centimetres of a corresponding parchment roll it would 
look just so. The columns are very narrow. In a roll it was 
convenient to have the columns narrow. For then it was not 
necessary to open so much of the roll at once, to fill out so much 
space with it when reading or when copying a quotation from it. 
The fact that the columns are so narrow makes it appear more 
likely that this manuscript is among the earlier large books that 
were written on leaves instead of in a roll. It is as if the scribes 
still clung to their accustomed narrow columns for a fine book. 
At the same time, if what was said about Eusebius' use of the 
terms " by threes and by fours " for three and four columns on a 
page should happen to be right, it would go to show that the 
leaves in books, instead of a roll, were not just then new, that 
they had been in use for awhile. Therefore I am inclined at 
present to suppose that the change from rolls to leaf-books was 
made about the year ± 300 as above stated. 

Of the 346J leaves, the New Testament and Barnabas with 
Hermas fill 147 J. The columns contain forty-eight lines. The 
parchment is good and is fairly thin. Tischendorf thought that it 
was made from antelope skins. I do not know with certainty what 
parchment made from antelope skins would look like. I fear that 
Tischendorf argued from the gentle grace of a swift antelope to a 
thin skin. Perhaps the size of the leaves led him to think of a 
larger animal. There can scarcely have been anyone in the East 
capable of telling him anything else than fanciful imaginings 
about what skins gave what parchments. It is hard to believe 
that there are no parchment makers to be found in Cairo or at 
Damascus, but I tried in vain to find them. At Jerusalem I 
discovered a Jewish parchment maker, but it is my impression 
that he was not a native of Jerusalem ; he had a German name, 
and was probably from Austria or Russia. The point is that 
there appears to be no one there who can say what kind of 
parchment comes from what kind of skin. And then, if I were 
to judge of antelope skin from the vigour and strength of the 



334 THE TEXT 

animals, I should not be inclined to suppose that it would be 
especially thin and fine ; but that is sheer theory ; I know 
nothing about it. 

But a practical reason seems to me to stand against the 
use of antelope skins. Here are three hundred and eighty-nine 
and a half leaves, for we must, of course, add the forty-three 
leaves of the Codex Friderico-Augustanus which are from the 
same volume, and as a great many leaves of the Bible are 
further lacking, the volume must have been much larger. 
Neither at Sinai nor at Jerusalem nor in Egypt, so far as I can 
see, is there any reason to suppose that the supply of antelopes 
was such as to make it easy to obtain so many leaves of antelope 
parchment within a reasonable number of years. If my judg- 
ment as to the quality of antelope skins be not at fault, only 
young animals could give such fine parchment, and this question 
of age would further limit the supply. Here my knowledge or 
my suppositions as to the parchment end. 

The ink is a pale brown, so pale that it might almost be called 
brownish, a suspicion of something brown. The letters in the lines 
are not very large. Perhaps they could be compared to the capital 
letters in this book, only that the old forms tend to a greater 
breadth, so that a round letter is a circle, not an oval, and a 
rectangular letter about fills a square. The words have no 
accents or spiritus signs. The apostrophe occurs sometimes. A 
period is occasionally used. In some places the sign > is found 
at the end of a line, showing that what follows is closely connected 
with what precedes. In other places it is used to fill out a line. 
There are often little short strokes, horizontal lines, that project 
a trifle from the column between two lines, or that are in the 
margin near the column, to show the beginning of a paragraph. 
Sometimes a paragraph is indicated by the fact that the first 
letter projects a mere trifle into the margin. It is one of the 
signs of the high age of the manuscript that these projecting 
letters are not larger than the rest of the text. The same remark 
holds for the small letters that occasionally occur. They keep 
to the full round or square form. Certain abbreviations occur 

frequently, such as the following : 6s for 0co's, *s for Kvptos, x? for 

XPL<tt6s, Trrjp for TraTijp, pvr\p for pafjT-qp, t>s for vlos, Sd8 for SaueiS, 



avos for av6pu)7ros, ir)\ for io-/3a^A, ikrjfx for te/30vcraAr;/x, ovvos for 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 335 

ovpavos, crrjp for crwr^p, and 070s for aravpos. In old times these 
abbreviations were termed a sign of age, but they are found even 
down to the youngest manuscripts and therefore mean nothing, 
give no token of high antiquity. It is also an abbreviation when, 
as often occurs in this manuscript, the numbers are not written 
out, but are represented by the Greek letters which take the place 
of our Arabic numerals. 

Owing to what is called itacism, certain vowels are not seldom 
replaced by others. Itacism denotes the fact that in Greek 
to-day, and probably at least from the time of Alexander the 
Great, the vowels t, r), v and the diphthongs «, ol all sound like 
an English e, and are often interchanged in the manuscripts. 
In a similar way o and o> are both usually short and may be 
confused with each other, and at and e sound both like e. In 
this manuscript ei and t are often written instead of each other, 
and then at and e. The confusion of v with ot, rj with et, 
and o with w, occurs here less frequently. Certain grammatical 
forms, which are often incorrectly termed "Alexandrian," are 
often found in this manuscript. 

One source of error depends upon the occurrence of the 
same word or words, or of words that look alike and end or 
begin with the same letters, more than once on the page from 
which the scribe is copying. Looking away from the original 
to write down the words just read, the scribe in turning his 
eyes back to the original strikes the other line, the one in 
which the same or similar words are found, and copies further 
from that point, leaving out thus by accident the words in 
between. It is, of course, not impossible for the scribe to return 
by this careless vision from the second occurrence of the words 
to the former place at which they occur, and thus to repeat a 
second time that passage. This, however, does not happen so 
readily, because the scribe usually observes at once that he has 
just written that passage down. This mistake is called homoiote- 
leuton or "like ending," because the like close of a line or of the 
words causes the confusion. 

This manuscript contains certain small sections that are of use 
to show in what way the Gospels agree with each other, that is to 
say, the Greek letters that give the numbers of these sections 
are written along the side of the columns. Under the number 
of each section stands the number of a canon or list in which 



336 THE TEXT 

the corresponding sections of the other Gospels may be looked 
up. It was another scribe, not the one who wrote the text, 
who put in these numbers of sections and canons, but he did it 
probably at the same time. The titles and the subscriptions to 
the books are very short, which is a sign of high age ; for example, 
Matthew has at the beginning and at the end and over the 
pages simply " according to Matthew," the two Greek words 
Kara fxaOOalov. We shall not recount the fragments of the Old 
Testament, that this manuscript contains, verse by verse. They 
are from Genesis, Numbers, First Chronicles, Second Ezra, 
Nehemiah, Esther, Tobit, Judith, First and Fourth Maccabees, 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, Nahum, 
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Psalms, 
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Wisdom, Sirach, Job. 
The New Testament is complete, and is arranged as follows : 
the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul in which Hebrews stands 
immediately after Second Thessalonians, Acts, the Catholic 
Epistles, and the Revelation. After Revelation, Barnabas and 
the Shepherd of Hermas are added. 

Four scribes wrote this manuscript. One of the four, whom 
Tischendorf called A, wrote First Chronicles, First Maccabees, 
the last four leaves of Fourth Maccabees, the whole New Testa- 
ment save seven leaves, and Barnabas. Without doubt this 
same scribe wrote also some of the books that are missing. 
The fourth scribe, named D, wrote Tobit, Judith, the first three 
and a half leaves of Fourth Maccabees, and the seven leaves 
in the New Testament not written by A. These seven leaves 
are the tenth and fifteenth in Matthew, the last in Mark, the 
first in Luke, — these two are leaves 28 and 29 of the New 
Testament, — the second leaf of First Thessalonians or leaf 
88, the third leaf of Hebrews or leaf 91, and perhaps the 
beginning of Revelation on leaf 126*. It is odd that another 
scribe should have written seven scattered leaves. It looks 
as if there had been mistakes on the leaves and he had 
supplied more correct ones. Another curious circumstance is 
the fact that, according to Tischendorf's view, this scribe D 
seems to have written all that we have of the New Testa- 
ment in the great Vatican manuscript of which we shall 
soon have to speak. Should this view be right it would fit 
in very well with the supposition that the two manuscripts 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 337 

both proceeded from the same place and were among the 
fifty of Constantine. 

The text in this manuscript is very good, and often agrees 
with the text of the Vatican manuscript. Westcott and Hort 
said that it was altogether pre-Syrian, or that its readings had 
not been altered by the Syrian scholars who appear in the third 
and in the fourth century to have busied themselves with the 
text. In the Gospels, especially in John and to a certain extent 
in Luke, and perhaps in Revelation, it contains Re-Wrought read- 
ings which Westcott and Hort called Western. It also has some 
Polished or so-called Alexandrian readings. Many scholars have 
felt it necessary to decry the text of this manuscript. That is 
wrong. Tischendorf may well have rated his great find a trifle 
too high. He would have been more than human if under 
the circumstances he had not done it, seeing that he for three 
years ate, drank, and slept this manuscript. Had he lived, he 
would surely here and there have modified his predilection for 
its readings. But it is, nevertheless, a very exceptional manu- 
script. Westcott and Hort, who praise B, the Vatican manu- 
script, highly, declare that this manuscript is far better than any 
of the manuscripts except B. It used also to be the fashion to 
say that the Sinaitic manuscript was very badly written, was full 
of clerical errors, and therefore less trustworthy. And the 
Vatican manuscript was supposed to be very correctly written. 
When, however, the Vatican copy came to be better known, it 
was found that in this respect there was not much choice 
between the two. The scribe who wrote the Vatican often leaves. 
out or repeats words and letters. The scribe of the Sinaitic errs 
less frequently in that way, but has his own faults, proceeding like 
those errors from swift writing; he sometimes puts a different 
Greek word in. 

Tischendorf thought that seven several correctors had put 
their pens to this book. The one he named with the letter a 
seemed to be of the same date as the original scribe, and 
at any rate of the fourth century. The corrector b was of 
about the sixth century, and only corrected a few passages, 
aside from the first pages of Matthew. The corrector c was 
probably of the beginning of the seventh century, and is often 
not clearly to be separated from the next corrector, who is of 
the same century. When the two can be distinguished from 
22 



338 THE TEXT 

each other, c is ca and the other is cb. It is clear that the 
next corrector, named cc, had the manuscript in his hands for 
a long while. His changes may be seen easily in Rev. i 9 - 11 - 19 
and 2 2 . The next one, named cc*, was also of the seventh 
century, and corrected a little in Rev. n 1 3 8 12 6 and 18 9 . The 
last corrector, named e, was of the twelfth century, and corrected 
but little; see, for example, Matt. 19 3 and 1 Tim. 3 16 . 

The following reasons may be urged to support the view of 
Tischendorf that this manuscript was written in the fourth century. 
In the first place, the parchment is very fine. In the second 
place, the four columns on a page, eight on the open double page, 
approach the form of the text as written on a roll. In the third 
place, the forms of the letters are old. In the fourth place, the 
column with no large initial letter thrust out into the edge is old. 
In the fifth place, the rarity of the punctuation speaks for age. 
In the sixth place, the less pure forms in spelling and grammar 
point to a high antiquity. In the seventh place, those short 
titles and subscriptions are old. In the eighth place, the larger 
chapters in the Gospels are not noted. In the ninth place, the 
Epistles of Paul are placed directly after the Gospels, as if in a 
near memory of the very great respect paid to Paul, and at a 
time at which the thought that it was most correct to place most 
of the apostles — as if Acts gave the deeds of all the apostles — and 
the Twelve-Apostles before Paul, had not yet crystallised. In 
the tenth place, the end of Mark ( 1 6 9-20 ) is not there, which fact 
points to a time at which the false ending, vv. 9-20 , had not yet 
been generally attached to that Gospel. And in the eleventh 
place, the addition of Barnabas and Hermas carries us back to 
the early period at which they were still read in the Church. For 
all these reasons, uncertain as all such datings are, it is proper 
palaeographically and theologically to assign this manuscript to 
the fourth century. 

It will be remembered that Eusebius' Pamphilus was named 
some distance back, and his library at Caesarea. At the end 
of the book of Esther is a subscription which refers to the 
comparison and correction of this manuscript with a manuscript 
of Pamphilus', which is called " very old." Adolf Hilgenfeld in 
Jena found that this manuscript was much too badly, too 
incorrectly, written to be of the fourth century, and he declared 
that if this manuscript and its corrector looked up to a manuscript 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 339 

of Pamphilus' — Pamphilus died in the year 309 — as very old, it 
could not possibly itself be of the fourth, but must be of the sixth 
century. In urging this latter argument, Hilgenfeld overlooked 
the fact that that subscription to Esther was probably written as 
late as the seventh century, at which time the corrector might well 
call Pamphilus' manuscript very old. And as for the incorrect 
writing, Hilgenfeld regarded the Vatican manuscript as of the 
fourth century, and it was as bad as the Sinaitic. Dean Burgon, 
of Chichester, named a number of points which seemed to him to 
make the Sinaitic appear to be surely younger than the Vatican, 
whether fifty or seventy-five or a hundred years. But Ezra Abbot, 
of Harvard, showed that the reasons given were either founded 
upon imperfect observation, or were of no weight for the proof 
of the dating desired by the dean. A palaeographer, Victor 
Gardthausen, of Leipzig, stated that the forms of the letters found 
in the Sinaitic manuscript showed that it had been written about 
the year 400 ; and he urged in support of this statement particularly 
a few words written with a brush on the wall of a cell. To this 
it may be freely acknowledged, that if there were good reasons for 
thinking that the Sinaitic manuscript was written in the year 400, 
the forms of the letters would scarcely place any bar in the way. 
But the reasons seem to point to an earlier date, and the letters 
offer no bar to that. It may, in fact, be asserted that all the palseo- 
graphical material that we to-day have in hand does not allow 
us to distinguish definitely between forms of letters possible in 
331 and forms possible in 400. And, finally, it is really not easy 
to comprehend how a palaeographer can for a moment entertain 
the thought of comparing the forms used by a scribe writing with 
a fine pen on good parchment for a good copy of a sacred book, 
with the forms dashed with a brush on the wall of a cell. 

I insist upon it that we do not know when the Sinaitic 
manuscript was written, yet at the present showing of the evidence 
it seems to me that the best tentative date to work upon is the 
year 331 named above. We or our successors are going to know 
more about all these things than we now know. 

Tischendorf when he returned from the East in 1859 set 
to work to prepare the great edition of the manuscript. I do 
not think that any large manuscript before or since was ever 
edited with such extraordinary pains and accuracy. Nor do 
I think that so much pains ever will be expended again upon 



340 THE TEXT 

a manuscript. For photography and photographic printing now 
render type-setting in such a case unnecessary. He caused 
five different sizes of type to be cut, and he endeavoured so 
far as possible to render in the edition even the distances 
between the letters. It was his intention to publish it as one 
of the monuments to commemorate the thousandth anniversary 
of the Russian Empire ; but a curious, one might say inex- 
plicable, piece of jealousy on the part of some of his enemies 
in Russia caused that to be forbidden. It appeared in four 
volumes in the year 1862. The second and third volumes 
contain the fragments from the Old Testament, and the fourth 
volume the New Testament with Barnabas and Hermas, all three 
of which volumes are, it is true, printed, yet as just said so carefully 
printed as to be almost as good as facsimiles. The first volume 
contains the preface, the commentary of phenomenal accuracy 
and fulness, and twenty-one lithographic plates made from 
photographs, or, in the case of a few things from other manuscripts 
brought in for comparison, from the most accurate tracings at 
command. This edition placed scholars in a position to examine 
the manuscript independently, and it was interesting to observe 
that Ezra Abbot, of Harvard, discovered and used in answering 
Burgon some facts that Tischendorf himself had not happened to 
notice in reference to one of the scribes. This edition the 
Russian emperor presented to many of the great libraries. He 
allowed Tischendorf to have a number of copies. In the year 
1863, Tischendorf published the New Testament in a quarto 
volume, in the four columns, but in ordinary Greek type, and 
with one facsimile. In the year 1864 he also issued a New 
Testament "from the Sinaitic manuscript," dated 1865; but the 
text that he gave in this was neither the Sinaitic text nor a good 
New Testament text, and was therefore of no proper use to 
anybody. In the year 1867 he published a brief appendix for 
the Sinaitic, the Vatican, and the Alexandrian manuscripts, a 
large page folio. 

The Codex Alexandrinus. 

The next manuscript to be taken up is that Alexandrian 
manuscript that was just referred to. It is called A, and was the 
first manuscript to receive thus a large letter as its designation. 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 341 

That set the fashion for the use of capitals to denote the 
manuscripts of the New Testament in the large or uncial writing. 
So far as we can judge, this manuscript was probably written in 
the last half of the fifth century, and in Egypt. The first historical 
note touching it is that it was presented to the patriarch of 
Alexandria in the year 1098, and the name " Codex Alexandrinus " 
is given to it because of this fact. In Egypt the belief was that 
Saint Thecla had written it with her own hand, as an Arabic 
note in the first of the four volumes states. We cannot be sure 
how the story arose. It may be that the manuscript was written 
in a monastery dedicated to Thecla. Tregelles made, however, 
another suggestion that looks quite plausible. The New 
Testament volume has long been mutilated, and begins now in 
the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew, in which chapter the lesson 
for Thecla's Day stands. Tregelles thought that Thecla's name 
might have on this account been written in the margin above, 
which has been cut off, and that therefore the Alexandrians or 
Cairenes or other Egyptians imagined that Thecla had written it. 
Such stories arise very easily. It is not a year since I visited a 
women's monastery in the East in which the abbess assured me 
that their beautiful manuscript had been written by an ancient 
saintly woman, whereas I found in it the name, and I think the 
date of the man who wrote it. 

In the seventeenth century, Cyril Lucar had this manuscript 
at Constantinople where he was patriarch. As he had pre- 
viously been patriarch of Alexandria, one would suppose that 
he had carried it with him to the new chair. It has, however, 
been thought by some that the manuscript was sent to Con- 
stantinople from Mount Athos. We do not know about that. 
We do know what was done with it in the year 1628, for Cyril 
Lucar then sent it as a present to the king of England, Charles 
the First. It is now in the British Museum, where the New 
Testament volume lies open in a glass case so that everyone can 
see it. This manuscript is like the Sinaiticus, the Vaticanus, and 
the Codex Ephrsemi, a manuscript of the Bible, although a few 
leaves are lacking. The four volumes number 773 leaves. It is 
the fourth volume in which the New Testament is to be found. 
It contains 143 (144) leaves; the extra leaf is a new one with a 
table of contents. 

This volume gives, besides the New Testament, the letter 



342 THE TEXT 

of Clement of Rome and the homily which is called Second 
Clement, and which was probably sent from Rome to Corinth 
during the second century. The leaves are 32 centimetres 
high and 26-3 broad. The writing is in two columns of from 
forty-nine to fifty-one lines each. The uncial letters are small 
and neat and simple. The greater part of the third volume of 
the Old Testament is in a different hand from the rest of the 
manuscript. There are only a few accents in the first four lines 
of the two columns at the beginning of Genesis, and they seem to 
be by a later hand. Occasionally a spiritus or an apostrophe is 
used. The period sometimes occurs ; sometimes a vacant space 
serves as punctuation. The paragraphs are marked by a much 
larger letter, which is put in the margin. We are accustomed to 
see the first letter of the first word of a paragraph thus enlarged 
and put in the margin. It is therefore surprising to observe that 
this is often by no means the case in the manuscripts, and not in 
this fine manuscript. The new paragraph begins in the line 
where it happens to fall, and has the usual size of letter. But 
the first letter of this new paragraph that strikes the next line is 
enlarged and placed in the margin. For us that is much like 
wriTing a word thus. At the beginnings of the books a few 
lines are written in red for ornament. Certain leaves, leaves 20 
to 95, from the opening verse of Luke as far as 1 Cor. io 8 
are on a coarser parchment, and appear to be from another 
hand. As for the itacistic errors, they are often to be met with ; 
for example, ai being exchanged for e, « for 1 or?j for 6. The 
sign > on the margin calls attention to the quotations from the 
Old Testament. 

The Eusebian sections and canons, which were mentioned in 
connection with the Sinaitic manuscript, are also found in this 
manuscript. It has also the larger chapters, and at the be- 
ginning of each Gospel the list of the chapters in each with the 
title of each chapter. The title of each chapter belongs also in 
the margin of the page on which the chapter is found, but an 
English bookbinder cut a large part of them off*. The subscrip- 
tions are simple, but not so simple as in the Sinaitic, since, for 
example, we read at the end of Matthew ciayye'Xiov Kara fxarOalov 
instead of merely Kara fxarOaiov. A few verses are lacking at four 
places in Genesis, a little over a chapter in First Samuel, and 
about thirty psalms. The New Testament begins, as was stated, 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 343 

with Matt. 25 s , and there is a gap in John 6 50 to 8 52 , and in 
2 Cor. 4 13 -i2 7 . One leaf is lost in the letter of Clement, 
and the last two leaves of Pseudo-Clement are gone. It is 
important to have the testimony of so old a manuscript in 
respect to the story of the adulteress, John 7 53 -8 u . Happily we 
can surmount the difficulty offered by the fact that John 6 50 to 
8 52 is lost. For by counting the lines we can prove that it was 
not in the book. There is not room for it. By means of the 
table of contents above referred to, we see that the eighteen 
psalms of Solomon used to stand at the end, after Pseudo- 
Clement. Karl Gottfried Woide published the New Testament 
from this manuscript in the year 1786, and B. H. Cowper in i860, 
and E. H. Hansell, with three other manuscripts, in 1864. Finally, 
the British Museum issued a photographic edition in 1878 and 
again in 1880, and then the three volumes of the Old Testament. 



The Codex Vaticanus. 

The Vatican manuscript of the Bible is B. It is in one 
thick volume. The leaves used to be somewhat larger ; now 
they are about twenty-seven centimetres square. Seven hundred 
and fifty-nine leaves are preserved, and a hundred and forty-two 
of these belong to the New Testament. The three columns 
on each page contain forty to forty-four lines each, but in the 
New Testament forty-two lines. The parchment is very fine, and 
is in a measure like vellum. The parchment looked to me like 
Western parchment. I wish I were able to see it again, for I 
have seen and studied parchment a great deal since 1886, when 
I examined this manuscript. The letters in which the text is 
written are small uncials, simple, and without breaks between the 
words. The original scribe did not add spiritus and accents, but 
there is occasionally in the New Testament an apostrophe. As 
we said for the Sinaitic manuscript, so we must here emphasise 
the fact that the paragraphs are not marked by larger letters. In 
some cases the initial letter is pushed out a little, a trifle, into 
the margin. The small letters sometimes used at the end of a 
line keep to the old forms. The sign > is used for the quota- 
tions from the Old Testament, just as in the Alexandrinus. 
There are plenty of the itacistic faults, especially the exchange 



344 THE TEXT 

of €i for e. The later forms, so-called " Alexandrian " forms, are 
used often. 

In the Gospels we find a chapter division that only occurs 
besides in a fragment at London. The book of Acts has two 
different divisions into chapters. The more singular of these 
two divisions seems to be noted in part in the Sinaitic manuscript, 
thus offering another indication of some kind of a connection 
between these two books in the days of their making. A very 
interesting observation attaches to an old division found in the 
Epistles, for it does not appear to take any notice of Second 
Peter, and seems therefore to be the work of someone who 
rejected that Epistle. Still another chapter phenomenon must be 
noted. The Epistles of Paul have chapter numbers, as now and 
then happens in the manuscripts, that do not begin afresh with 
each Epistle, but continue from Romans to the last Epistle in one 
series. In this manuscript Hebrews follows Thessalonians. And, 
nevertheless, these chapter numbers show that in the book in which 
they were originally given to the chapters, Hebrews stood imme- 
diately after Galatians. The titles and subscriptions are very simple. 
The manuscript is less neat than it otherwise would be, because a 
later hand went over the pale letters and added spiritus and accents. 

A little way back I called attention to the fact that this 
manuscript has, a great exception in Greek manuscripts, ancient 
numbers for the leaves. That these numbers are not from a 
Greek but from a Semite is shown by the circumstance that 
they are not on the recto but on the verso of the leaves, 
where the Semites put their numbers. These numbers give us a 
chance to determine the, probably, original condition of the 
manuscript, the original number of the leaves at the beginning 
of the book, even if nothing tells us how many leaves are lost at 
the end. There were apparently at first eight leaves at the 
beginning of the manuscript, before the text began. For manu- 
scripts, just like modern books with the numbers of the pages, 
begin to count their regular quires with the regular text. Pre- 
faces and the like at the beginning of the volume do not belong 
to the body of the quires. The lines drawn in the parchment 
are in some respects peculiar, but it was not possible for me in 
1886 to complete my examination of them. They probably 
betray the hands of different workmen. There is an amusing 
circumstance to be mentioned touching this manuscript. On 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 345 

many of the leaves a sharp eye can detect the myriad lines thai 
we sometimes see in paper and which I suppose are due to the 
wires upon which the paper is made. Of course, parchment 
has no such lines. A hasty observer might declare this fine 
parchment to be paper. But if that sharp eye should look still 
more closely it would in some places find Italian words, printed 
backwards, it is true. At some time or other, without doubt 
when the manuscript was bound in the present binding and was 
to be pressed, paper was put in between the leaves to prevent 
them from printing the old Greek letters off upon each other. 
Under such conditions, with such a sacred and costly manuscript, 
it should have been a matter of course to use for this purpose 
clean thin paper. Instead of that the profane binder put in 
ordinary everyday newspapers, hence those marks. 

This manuscript contains both Testaments, but does not 
appear to have included the books of the Maccabees. There 
are three vacant spaces. At the beginning almost forty-six 
chapters of Genesis are lacking. Nearly thirty-two psalms are 
gone. And the end of Hebrews from g 25 has disappeared with 
First and Second Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation. 
The close of Hebrews and the Revelation were supplied in 
the fifteenth century out of a manuscript belonging to the Cardinal 
Bessarion. 

Tischendorf distinguished three scribes in this manuscript. 
One of them wrote the whole New Testament and apparently 
those seven leaves of the Sinaitic manuscript. The Sinaitic was 
often corrected. The Vatican was corrected once, doubtless at 
the time of writing, and once, so Tischendorf thought, in the 
tenth or eleventh century. The Roman editors placed this 
second corrector in the fifteenth century. 

This manuscript is supposed, as we have seen, to have come 
from the same place as the Sinaitic manuscript. I have said that 
these two show connections with each other, and that they would 
suit very well as a pair of the fifty manuscripts written at 
Caesarea for Constantine the Great. Yet I have not failed to 
call attention to the apparently Western parchment of this 
Vatican manuscript, and I have seen some writing belonging 
originally to Italy which seems much more akin to the Vatican 
hand than to the hand that wrote the Sinaitic. We must wait 
and examine further. 



34-6 THE TEXT 

The Vatican Library possessed this treasure before the first 
catalogue, which was made in the year 1475. I* was n °t> how- 
ever, until the nineteenth century that the real value of the 
manuscript was discovered. The discoverer was the learned 
Roman Catholic professor Leonhard Hug, who long taught 
in Tubingen. It was the fortunes and the misfortunes of war 
that made it possible for Hug to examine the book. The 
French troops annexed the manuscript treasures of Italy — the 
stamp of the Republique Francaise may still be seen in many 
of the great Italian libraries. Thus this volume was in 
1809 at Paris. Hug dated it at the middle of the fourth 
century. 

But it was then years before the manuscript could be freely 
used by scholars. And that was due to an unfortunate piece 
of work on the part of the learned Cardinal Mai, who 
published so many valuable manuscripts. This manuscript 
was worthy of his highest efforts, and for some unknown reason 
it was the worst thing he ever did, and he knew it. It was a 
pity that he did not burn the printed sheets and begin over 
again. I like to think that he wished to do that, and that he 
was not allowed to do it. Yet perhaps he could not bring 
himself to destroy the work done. His edition was printed in 
an unconscionably slovenly manner in the years from 1828 to 
1838, but not then issued. Tischendorf went to Rome in 1843 
and spent some months there, but was only allowed to study 
this manuscript for six hours on two days. He made the most 
of those few hours, collating important passages and tracing four 
facsimiles. Tregelles spent five months at Rome in the year 
1845, and could not get permission to examine the manuscript 
at all. He remembered, however, some readings which he 
observed while looking at the manuscript as any traveller might. 
And all the while that edition of Mai was lying stowed away. 
Finally, Mai died in the year 1854. His edition had then 
reached the age of sixteen. It was nineteen years old before 
Carlo Vercellone actually issued four volumes of the Old Testa- 
ment and a fifth containing the New Testament. Although this 
edition was about as bad as bad could be, it was notwithstanding 
possible to learn something about the hidden manuscript from 
it. In the year 1859 a slim little volume was published by 
Vercellone, which was not very accurate, but which gave the 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 347 

New Testament from this manuscript far better than the five 
thick volumes had done. 

After Tischendorf had published the Sinaitic manuscript, 
he conceived the plan of reproducing the Vatican manuscript 
in the same way. It was a great pity that the then pope 
did not allow him to do it. We should even to-day know 
far more about the manuscript, had he received permission. 
But finally he gained permission to examine the volume for 
two weeks, three hours a day, I suppose the library hours. 
While examining it he either wrote twenty pages off in the 
three columns or he noted just where the lines began on these 
pages, so that he knew precisely how they stood. It was an 
unsatisfactory and hasty way of working, but it was better than 
nothing. Upon the basis of that work he published a quarto 
edition, giving those twenty pages in the columns and lines, and 
for the rest merely giving each column as a paragraph. It was 
perhaps a part of the bargain for that work, that Tischendorf 
should allow the pope to have a set of his excellent old uncial 
types. With these types the Roman scholars began an edition. 
Carlo Vercellone and Giuseppe Cozza were the first two. When 
Vercellone died Cajetano Sergio took up the work. And 
Henrico Fabiani replaced Sergio after his eyes had grown too 
weak. The volume with the New Testament appeared in 1868, 
and the closing volume with the preface in the year 1881. The 
distinction between the different hands is not so accurate as is 
desirable. Giuseppe Cozza -Luzi published a photographic 
edition in the year 1889. 

This Vatican manuscript is considered by a great many 
scholars to be the best of all the New Testament manuscripts. 
The Sinaitic and the Vatican are, from the standpoint of the 
history of the text as thus far known, by far the two best 
witnesses for the oldest text. Wherever they were written and 
at whatever date, they represent, it would appear, as both 
Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort thought, good manuscripts 
of the second century. The word good is to be emphasised 
here. If the given view be correct, they represent not the 
current re-wrought, worked over manuscripts of the second 
century, but such as retained in an eminent degree the text 
which had come to that century from the hands of the original 
writers. The Vatican manuscript shows in the Epistles of Paul 



34-8 THE TEXT 

a few readings from those current manuscripts of the second 
century, but not very many. 



The Codex Ephr^emi. 

We have still one great manuscript of the whole Bible 
that we must look at, that is to say, a manuscript which at first 
contained both the Old and the New Testaments. But it is, alas ! 
very far from its first estate. It is like a man who has been 
maimed in the wars. Its beauty and its fulness are departed. 
In the first place, the original writing had faded away. Let me 
observe at this point that we probably should assume that 
all the inks, the common inks used in the manuscripts, were at 
first black, or as nearly black as the makers of each ink 
could compass. We are told that the parchment of the old 
manuscripts was washed off and pumiced off in order to 
remove the writing. Some manuscripts show signs of such 
a treatment. Yet I think that in a large number of cases 
the ink became with time so pale, that, although a scholar 
examining it closely would be able to make out the words, 
it nevertheless offered no particular obstacle to a new use 
of the parchment with fresh and black ink. To return to 
this manuscript, we must first say that it is in the National 
Library 7 at Paris, and add that its name is Codex Ephraemi, or 
in full Codex Ephrsemi Syri, the manuscript of Ephraim 
the Syrian, and its sign is the large letter C. This name tells a 
tale. That fine old manuscript of the Bible had been pulled to 
pieces in its pallid old age. Much of it had either been lost or 
was now laid aside. The original had perhaps been written 
in Egypt before the middle of the fifth century, had been 
corrected, it may be, in Palestine in the sixth century, and 
again corrected in the ninth century possibly in Constantinople, 
and was in the twelfth century thoroughly used up. Thereupon 
someone wrote thirty - eight treatises of Ephraim the Syrian 
on it, but in Greek. I say on it, I should say on fragments of it, 
or on what was left of it. 

There are now only 209 leaves, of which 145 belong to 
the New Testament. With this manuscript we reach a page 
of a single column. The Sinaitic has four columns, the Vatican 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 349 

three, the Alexandrinus two, and the Ephraim one. There are 
usually forty-one lines in a column, but we find also forty, forty- 
two, and four times there are forty-six lines. The parch- 
ment is good and is fine. The uncial letters are a trifle larger 
than those in the three manuscripts just named. There are 
no spiritus or accents, and the apostrophe does not often 
occur. There is but little punctuation. A colon is used, 
and after it a space as wide as a letter is left free. In this 
manuscript the larger letters are frequently used, and that 
not merely where paragraphs begin. One ornamental part 
of the writing of this manuscript was unfortunate for a little of 
the text. Much like the Alexandrinus, the first three lines 
of each book were written in red. That was very effective. 
The red fluid, however, is not an ink, but an acidless prepara- 
tion of colour, and the consequence is that anything written 
in red has but the slightest, the most superficial hold on the 
parchment, and with time, if the given leaves be much thrown 
about, it vanishes almost entirely. In case a leaf of parchment 
is washed and pumiced, of course that is the end of colours in 
the text. The catalogues of the chapters were placed at 
the beginnings of the books, and the little chapters or the 
Eusebian sections were noted on the margin. We do not 
find the numbers of the Eusebian canons under the numbers of 
the sections, but that may very well be because they were 
written in red and have vanished. Only the Gospels have 
chapters. The Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and the Epistles 
of Paul have not the Euthalian chapters, and Revelation has 
not the chapters of Andrew of Csesarea. The subscriptions are 
very simple. 

No one will be surprised to learn that in a manuscript 
that has been so much buffeted about, words or letters are 
often lacking, and the upper black writing covers many a 
letter. It is under such circumstances the merest lottery, what 
may happen to be left over. As a fact every book of the 
New Testament is represented save Second John and Second 
Thessalonians. This manuscript is closely connected with 
Tischendorfs early work, and gives a proof of his attention to 
words written by Lachmann. The latter said in a note to an 
article in a theological journal that " Parisian scholars could 
win immortal merit in reference to the criticism of the New 



350 THE TEXT 

Testament by printing the royal Codex Ephraim and the Claro- 
montanus." The moment that Tischendorf had habilitated, that 
is, had won his place as a privatdozent in the theological 
faculty at Leipzig, he started off to Paris and set about this 
work. That was in 1840, and in 1843 the fragments of the 
New Testament appeared, accompanied by a careful commen- 
tary on about 1500 passages that were doubtful or that had 
been corrected, as well as an essay on 1 Tim. 3 16 . The Old 
Testament fragments were issued in 1845, and thus this old 
writing, which Pierre Allix, who died in 1717, had discovered, 
was given to the world by Saxon industry. It has sometimes 
been said that Tischendorf spoiled this manuscript by using a 
bad reagent to draw forth the old letters that had grown so pale. 
That was a mistake. Simonin put Gioberti tincture on some of 
them with the librarian's permission in 1834, and that was the 
year at which Tischendorf left school and went to the university. 
So much for the four great manuscripts of the Bible that stand 
forth in the history and work of textual criticism like David's 
mighty men. Yet the other manuscripts that give us but parts 
of the New Testament are not to be despised. Some of them 
are of very great importance. 



The Codex Bezje. 

The Vatican manuscript recalled to us the vicissitudes of 
times of war. The next one, it may be with a companion, 
came to light amid similar scenes. We have two manuscripts 
for which we use the sign D. One of them is the "Codex 
Bezae," or Beza's manuscript, in the University Library at 
Cambridge, England, and the other is the " Codex 
Claromontanus " in the National Library at Paris. Both these 
manuscripts belonged to Theodore de Beze, the celebrated 
Frenchman who passed over to Switzerland and became the 
successor of Calvin as leader of the Genevan Church. He said, 
when he in the year 1581 gave the former manuscript to 
the University of Cambridge, that it had long lain in the dust in 
the monastery of St. Irenaus at Lyons, and that it had been found 
there during the civil war in 1562. Just at that time, between 
1 56 1 and 1563, Beze had returned to France because 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 35 1 

Protestantism was apparently gaining due recognition. In the 
last edition of his notes on the New Testament in the year 1598, 
however, he called this manuscript " The Codex Claromontanus." 
And on the back of the title of the manuscript now at 
Paris, Beze wrote that it was found in the monastery in 
Clermont-en-Beauvoisis, to-day the chief city of the department 
Oise. Clermont probably then still belonged to the Condes, so 
that he may well have gotten the books through the mediation 
of some officer or soldier from Conde's guards. It does not make 
much difference whether he got one from Lyons and the other 
from Clermont, a hundred and thirty or forty kilometres distant, 
or both from Clermont. The manuscripts doubtless belonged 
together originally. There are among other possibilities two 
worth mentioning, namely, on the one hand, that the reference of 
the Lyons manuscript to Clermont was merely a momentary slip 
of the memory ; or, on the other hand, that Beze learned after 1 581 
that this manuscript was not as he had previously supposed from 
Lyons, but from Clermont. Perhaps the trooper had forgotten 
exactly where he had picked them up, and Beze may later in 
some way have gotten surer word of the place. 

Both manuscripts are of the sixth century, both are Greek and 
Latin, and both place the text before us that appears to have 
been most widely spread during the latter part of the second 
century, the Re-Wrought Text, the text that was worked over anew 
by many a hand. It would perhaps be better to say, not the 
text, but, one phase of the text current. For that text was in 
a way chameleon like, ever changing, and varying doubtless 
provincially as well. The Cambridge manuscript is 26 x 21.5 
centimetres, and contains 409 leaves (or 415 with nine new 
ones). Originally it oust have contained at least 510 leaves. 
Each page has one column; the Greek is on the left-hand 
page. The column numbers thirty-three lines. The letters are 
of about the same size as those in the Ephraim manuscript. 
The Latin letters are in a way assimilated to the Greek 
letters, being rounded off like the latter. The words run 
together, save in titles and subscriptions. Here we meet a text 
that is not written straight ahead, but which is cut up into 
lines according to the sense. These are the oldest sense-lines 
for this part of the New Testament. The first letter of a section 
is thrust into the margin, but is usually of the same size as 



352 THE TEXT 

the other letters. A larger letter is in some places put in to 
show a division of sense in the middle of a line. 

This manuscript contains the four Gospels and the Acts, but 
there are a few gaps in it. The Gospels are in the order Matthew, 
John, Luke, Mark, with the two Twelve- Apostles first and the 
friends of apostles following. There is a singular chapter division 
which assigns to Matthew in Greek so far as this Gospel is pre- 
served 583 chapters, in Latin 590, to John 165 and in Latin 169, 
to Luke 136 and in Latin 143, to Mark 148, and to Acts 235 
chapters. Each book has the first three lines in red letters, and 
red and black lines alternate in the subscriptions. The Catholic 
Epistles apparently used to be in this volume. They present us a 
problem. In the first place, it is curious that they should have 
stood before and not after Acts. We find before Acts the last 
five verses of Third John, but only in Latin, and the subscription 
follows : " Third John closes, the Acts of the Apostles begins.' 1 
That assures us that they were before Acts, and it shows us that 
Jude either was left out or must have stood at some other place 
than its usual one after Third John. But it is possible after all 
that the Catholic Epistles were not all here, for Wilhelm Bousset 
calculates that there is just room for the Revelation and the 
three Epistles of John. If the Gospel of John had been at the 
close of the four Gospels as usual, instead of following upon 
Matthew, such a position for Revelation and t, 2 and 3 John 
would have given us John all in one. Frederick Henry Ambrose 
Scrivener published this manuscript in 1864, and in the year 
1899 a fine photographic edition was issued in two volumes at 
the expense of the University. 

Scrivener thought that fifteen different hands corrected this 
volume. The most important of these were the first four. The 
first one made about 181 changes in a careful beautiful hand in the 
sixth century. The second w r as probably of the seventh century, 
and made about 327 changes, besides adding some spiritus and 
accents and other signs. The third, it may be towards the end 
of the seventh century, made 130 changes ; and the fourth, of the 
same age, 160 changes, chiefly in the Acts. This manuscript w r as 
probably written in the West. The relation of the Greek to the 
Latin text has been much discussed. The Greek has been thought 
independent, and has been thought dependent upon an Eastern 
version, and has been also thought to be dependent upon 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 353 

the Latin text at its side. Curiously enough some Latin forms 
have been introduced into the Greek text. For several years 
there has much been written about the text represented by this 
manuscript, which used to be called the "Western Text," a 
totally false name. The effort was made to place it in value 
before the Sinaitic and the Vatican manuscripts. The real 
state of the case, so far as the material in our hands permits 
a decision, seems to be that this text is the current corrupted 
text of the later second century. Be this the case, then it 
is clear that we may often find in passages that are not corrupted 
an agreement with the two great manuscripts just named, and we 
do find such agreement in many cases. The Latin text was 
probably modified so as to accord better with the Greek text. 

In a parenthesis it may here be observed that there are in 
the usual lists of the uncial manuscripts of the Gospels some 
manuscripts that never should have been there. The most 
absurd case is that of the manuscript with the sign F a , which 
is an Old Testament manuscript that merely has a few scattered 
verses of the New Testament on the margin. And then there 
are eight manuscripts, all but one clearly psalters, which contain 
the three Canticles from the first and second chapters of Luke or 
parts of them. These belong among the lesson-books, not 
among the uncial manuscripts of the Gospel text. 



E G H I I b K L. 

The uncial manuscript of the Gospels known by the letter 
E is at Basel in the University Library, and is of the eighth 
century. There are various gaps in the original text of Luke, 
some of which a later hand supplied. — The manuscript F is at 
Utrecht in the University Library, and is of the ninth or tenth 
century. A great many passages are missing. — The two 
manuscripts G and H have each a half a leaf in Trinity 
College at Cambridge. They belonged once to the celebrated 
Hamburg pastor and scholar Johann Christoph Wolf, and he 
sent these fragments to Bentley, as a cloth merchant sends a 
pattern of cloth, simply to let him know what the manuscripts 
looked like. The former manuscript, G, is now in the British 
Museum. It is of the ninth or tenth century. The latter, H, 
23 



354 THE TEXT 

is in the City Library at Hamburg, and is also of the ninti or 
tenth century. — The letter I denotes twenty-eight leaves at St. 
Petersburg, in the Imperial Library, that are of the fifth century, 
and were written anew with a Georgian text in the tenth 
century. — The letter I b stands for two good leaves of the fifth 
century from Egypt, containing parts of the thirteenth and 
sixteenth chapters of John. These leaves were faded or the 
Greek was rubbed off in the ninth century, and Syriac was 
written upon them, and then in the tenth or eleventh century that 
had faded or was rubbed off, and Syriac, hymns of Severus', ap- 
peared as the third writing. Thus they are doubly palimpsest. — 
The manuscript for the sign K is in the National Library at Paris, 
and is of the ninth century. It was written by a monk named 
Basil and bound by a monk named Theodulos, and as they 
besought the Virgin Mary and Saint Eutychius to accept it 
and to pray for them, it was doubtless written for a church or 
a monastery, which would then mean the Church of the 
Monastery, dedicated to St. Eutychius. — The manuscript L is 
a particularly good one. It is also in the library at Paris, and 
stands there just before the manuscript K. It is of the eighth 
century, and has coarse and thick parchment. It is not well 
written, and it may be that the scribe who copied it did not 
understand Greek. There are five small gaps in it. Now this 
is one of the best later copies of the four Gospels. Its text is 
extraordinarily good, and often agrees with the text of the great 
Vatican manuscript. 

M N O P Q. 

The letter M stands for a Parisian manuscript of the end of 
the ninth century that doubtless came from the East, for it has 
Arabic writing in it. — The manuscript marked N has had a varied 
fate. There were two leaves at Vienna, four at London, and six 
at Rome. Then thirty-three turned up on the island of Patmos, 
and a few years ago the Russian ambassador at Constantinople, 
now at Paris, succeeded in getting 182 leaves more, which have 
been placed in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg. That 
later part of the manuscript lived an exciting life for a few 
years before it was thus purchased. It was in the village 
Sarumsachly, about forty kilometres north of Kaisarie, in 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 355 

Cappadocia that was. Once the bishop of the diocese is 
said to have caused it to be stolen. The villagers, however, 
got wind of the robbery and chased the thieves. When they 
caught them they gave them a sound beating, dusted their 
garments in the Connaught fashion, and carried the book 
back home again. This is a purple manuscript, and was 
probably written at the close of the sixth century. The leaves 
are 36 x 26*5 centimetres, and now 227 leaves are known. 
The pages have two columns of sixteen lines each. The 
text is written in silver letters, and the names of God and 
Jesus are in gold. In the time of the Roman emperors purple 
manuscripts were the noble books. They were not practical, 
but they cost a great deal, and they looked distinguished. A 
letter written by Theonas, who is supposed to have been bishop 
of Alexandria a little before the year 300, refers to them. He 
wrote to a Christian .named Lucian, who had been made the 
overseer having the closer attendants of the emperor under his 
care. Theonas told him, in speaking of the librarian, that this 
official should not make a point of writing whole manuscripts 
on purple parchment and in gold letters, unless the monarch 
specially asked to have it done. The text offers many good 
readings. H. S. Cronin published the text in 1899. — There 
are in the library at St. Petersburg two fragments also on purple 
parchment, and also written probably in the sixth century, but 
with golden letters. — The letter O signifies eight leaves of 
John, of the ninth century, apparently written in the monastery 
of Dionysius on Mount Athos. They are now at Moscow in the 
library of the Synod. — At Wolfenbiittel, where Lessing was once 
librarian, there is a manuscript of the " Origins " of Isidore of 
Sevilla, Isidorus Hispalensis. Its chief value, at least for us, 
lies beneath the words of Isidore. For three old manuscripts 
contributed leaves to this volume. One contained Wulfila's 
Gothic translation of Romans, and the two others, which we 
call P and Q, contain Gospel fragments in Greek. — The one 
named P is of the sixth century, and consists of forty-three 
leaves, with two columns and twenty-four lines in each column, 
containing fragments from all four Gospels. Tischendorf 
published the text in 1869. The text is fairly good. — The 
other fragments, Q, are confined to Luke and John. There 
are thirteen leaves of them, with two columns and twenty-eight 



356 THE TEXT 

lines in the column. These are of the fifth century. The ttxl 
is also fairly good. 

R S T U V. 

The letter R offers us a manuscript of the sixth century 
in the British Museum, having forty-eight leaves, with two 
columns and twenty-five fines in a column. There is a thick 
and black Syriac text, writings of Severus of Antioch, written 
in the ninth century over the Greek, and making the read- 
ing of the ancient text more difficult. This volume was 
brought to the British Museum in the year 1847 from the 
monastery of the Virgin Mary, a Coptic monastery in the 
Nitrian desert, seventy miles north-west from Cairo. William 
Cureton read and published four thousand verses of the Iliad 
that were under the Syriac text, and Tischendorf published the 
fragments of Luke in 1857. — The letter S presents to us the 
first manuscript in our review which has a hard and sure date. 
It is in the Vatican Library, and was written just before the 
middle of the tenth century, in the year 949. It was written 
by a monk named Michael. — The letter T represents, with a 
series of small letters to distinguish the different manuscripts, 
a number of fragments, some larger some smaller, of the 
centuries from the fourth (or the third?) up to the ninth or 
tenth. This group is connected with Egypt and with Coptic 
scribes. — The letter U represents, like K and M, a complete 
manuscript of the four Gospels. It is of the ninth or tenth 
century and is in the library of St. Mark at Venice. The 
text is of a late cast. — The manuscript known as V is in the 
library of the Synod at Moscow, and is of the ninth century. 



W X Y Z. 

Somewhat like T, the letter W brings again many fragments 
of the Gospels in various libraries, dating from the seventh to 
the ninth century. — The letter X is one of the manuscripts 
that have an uncial text combined with a commentary written 
in minuscles. It is in the University Library at Munich, and is 
of the tenth century. The order of the Gospels is Matthew, 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 357 

John, Luke, Mark. The Gospel according to Matthew is 
furnished with a full commentary drawn from Chrysostom, 
and so is the Gospel according to John. The commentary 
to Luke contains many references to what has already been 
discussed above in Matthew. By this time the whole contents 
of the Gospels have been treated, and therefore Mark has no 
commentary at all. — There are fourteen leaves in the Royal 
Library at Munich, of the ninth or tenth century, which are 
denoted by X b . They contain the beginning of Luke, and 
have a commentary in small or minuscle writing. — Under 
the letter Y we find six- leaves of the eighth century in the 
Barberini Library at Rome. The text is from John and 
is good. — In Dublin we have the manuscript Z in Trinity 
College, a sixth century palimpsest with an extraordinarily 
good text of fragments of Matthew. It agrees with the 
Sinaitic especially, but also with the Vatican and with the 
Codex Bezse. It was published by John Barret in 1801, and 
again by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott in 1880, with three very 
fine facsimiles. 

r — The Codex A. 

Now we come to Greek letters as signs, and begin with 
T, which is partly in the Bodleian Library at Oxford and 
partly in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg. There is a 
tantalisingly imperfect date in it, so that we are almost as wise 
without it as with it. It is probably of the ninth or tenth century. 
The text is of a late cast, but it sometimes has fairly good 
readings. Tischendorf brought it in two parts from an Eastern 
monastery. — The next manuscript, A, in the library of the Stift 
at St. Gallen in Switzerland, is in many ways interesting. It is of 
the ninth or tenth century, and contains 198 leaves of one column, 
with from seventeen to twenty-eight lines on the page. The text 
is both Greek and Latin. The Greek uncial letters are rough and 
coarse, and the Latin is in small writing between the lines. The 
writing is not very straight, so that the whole appearance of the 
manuscript is a little uncouth. There is sometimes a large letter 
in the middle of a line, showing that it was copied fiom a 
manuscript written in sense-lines. Almost everywhere we find a 
period or a point after each Greek word, but the words are 



358 THE TEXT 

sometimes not rightly divided. We can see clearly that the 
scribe was more used to writing Latin than Greek. He some- 
times confused letters that looked alike ; for example, N and II, 
Z and H, P and the Latin R. The larger letters are rather 
smeared over than painted with different colours. The titles 
for the chapters stand often in the middle of the text. 
There are Greek notes here and there, which mention 
Godeschalk, who died in 866, and a later hand names 
Aganon, who died in 941, whereas we are more accustomed 
to find the names of Origen and Basil and Chrysostom in 
the manuscripts. 

One interesting thing about this manuscript is, that it seems 
to have been written by an Irish monk, and perhaps at St. Gallen 
itself, in the ninth or tenth century. Thus here for the second time 
Northwestern Europe appears in our review of the manuscripts. 
Further, this volume is, if I am not mistaken, one of a group of 
three, probably written by the same monk at the same time. One 
of the other manuscripts is at Dresden, and we shall have to 
describe it among the manuscripts of the Epistles of Paul as G. 
And the third is a psalter, which I saw at the library at St. 
Gallen. But another thing in A points us back to a much 
earlier period. There was a time, as we have seen, at which 
each Gospel was written on its own roll. I say " roll," because 
we do not suppose that this individualising, or this continued 
separate life of the single Gospels, lasted up to the years in which 
leaf-books were made. Now so long as the Gospels thus existed 
separately, each could have its own experiences, its own good 
or evil fortunes. Each could wander quite alone into this or 
that province, and be corrected and copied off without reference 
to the others. And conversely each could come into any 
province and exist there in a form different from that found 
usually in the given province. We could even imagine it pos- 
sible that a Christian should have happened to become the 
possessor of four separate rolls, one of each Gospel, no two of 
which came from the same place, and contained the same cast 
of text. 

Let us now suppose, however, a more likely case, namely 
that a man had three Gospels in the style of text usual in his 
neighbourhood, and that his fourth roll with the remaining 
Gospel was from another province ; that it had been bought by 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 359 

him when on a journey, or brought to him by some strange 
Christian from afar. Taking a further step we observe that this 
possessor of three rolls of one cast of text, and of a fourth roll 
of a different cast of text, determines to have his four Gospels 
all copied off into one roll, or, if the invention of leaf-books has 
been made in between, to have them copied into a single leaf- 
book. The consequence is, that we at once see the difference 
between the kinds of text. This is what happened to the manu- 
script now under consideration. Matthew, Luke, and John are 
in it of a rather late kind of text, and give us but rarely old 
readings. Mark, on the contrary, offers to us a text that is 
more like the text of the Ephraim manuscript, and of the 
manuscript that has the sign L, and has many a good reading, 
many an old one. Therefore when A is quoted for a reading 
in the gospel according to Mark, it has a much greater value 
than when it is quoted for Matthew or Luke or John. H. C. 
M. Rettig published this manuscript in facsimile in the year 
1836, in a most excellent manner. I can recall no edition of 
a New Testament manuscript before the exceptional editions 
of Tischendorf and of his day that could be compared in 
exactness to this edition by Rettig. 



© — A AND 566. 

Under the letter © we have, distinguished by added small a, b, 
etc., eight fragments of Gospel manuscripts, all but part of one at 
St. Petersburg. They range from the sixth to the ninth or tenth 
century. — The manuscript A is at Oxford in the Bodleian, and is of 
the ninth or tenth century. It offers a curious problem. It con- 
tains Luke and John. Now the small letter, minuscle, manuscript 
numbered 566 seems to be the first part of this very volume. That 
a man should, in the years which were on the margin between 
capital or uncial letters and small or minuscle letters, begin a 
manuscript in the older way in the large letters and then at the 
end of Mark say : Now I must try the new letters : — that would 
not be strange. But it is strange that he should write Matthew 
and Mark in the new small letter and then say : I am tired of 
that. I shall go back to the old, large, and fine letters. It is 
like the wine at Cana. The scribe has kept the good letters for 



360 THE TEXT 

the end. This manuscript has a good pedigree and one that 
is down in writing, although we must take the beginning of it 
from that former small letter part. At the end of Matthew we 
read in curt translation : " Gospel according to Matthew : written 
and corrected from the ancient manuscripts in Jerusalem : those 
kept in the holy mountain: in 2514 lines, 355 chapters." At 
the end of Mark we read : "Gospel according to Mark : written 
and corrected likewise from the carefully prepared ones in 1506 
lines, 237 chapters." At the end of Luke: " Gospel according 
to Luke: written and corrected likewise in 2677 lines, 342 
chapters." At the end of John : " Gospel according to John : 
written and corrected likewise from the same copies in 2210 
lines, 232 chapters." 

In the East it is hard to get the scholars to accept these in- 
scriptions as applying to the holy mountain in Jerusalem. The 
name holy mountain would, of course, apply also to Mount Sinai, 
which is always called the " mountain trodden upon by God." 
And what could be more biblical, or sound more Davidic, than 
going up to the holy mountain, even Jerusalem, Mount Sion. 
But now for centuries Akte, Mount Athos, has been the one 
great Hagion Oros, ayiov opos, Holy Mountain of Greek, Slavic, 
and Georgian Christendom, and it is hard for Eastern theo- 
logians to believe that anything else has been thus named. We 
do not know how far back this inscription reaches. It would 
be possible that this manuscript itself was thus written and 
corrected in Jerusalem. I see no difficulty in the supposition 
that the manuscripts kept in the holy mountain were manu- 
scripts kept somewhere at Jerusalem, even if I cannot say 
precisely where. Those lines given at the end of the Gospels 
are the space lines I spoke of, and the chapters are the small 
chapters called the Eusebian sections. It must be conceded 
that this manuscript belongs to the younger class of manuscripts. 
Its text is, however, much better than that of the general run 
of younger books, and contains many old readings. 



H. 

Our next manuscript is a very exceptionally good one, and it 
is a pity that there are only eighty-six and three half leaves of 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 361 

it in our hands. It is at London, and belongs to the British and 
Foreign Bible Society. It is extremely fitting that this great and 
incomparably useful society should have a fine manuscript of the 
Bible. The society is worthy of the greatest manuscripts. But 
keeping manuscripts is not the work of this society, and this 
manuscript is not in the proper place there. I hope that some 
day the society will ask Sir Edward Maunde Thompson to have 
the manuscript most carefully rearranged according to the 
ancient and precious text, by a competent scholar, say Frederic 
G. Kenyon, and then to bind it in the bindery of the British 
Museum, and then to keep it in the Museum, perhaps placing 
it in a glass case and writing upon it that it is the property of 
the British and Foreign Bible Society, put there on eternal 
deposit It is denoted by the letter H, and is of the eighth 
century, 35*8x287 centimetres. The text is written in large 
uncial letters, and is accompanied by a chain or combination 
commentary in small uncial letters. It is the oldest manuscript 
with a chain. The chapter division is the same as the singular 
one in the Vatican manuscript B. It contains fragments from 
the first eleven chapters of Luke. The text is extraordinarily 
good, and agrees with the oldest manuscripts. There is a second 
writing on top of this good ancient text, and we may be glad 
that there is, since we should certainly otherwise never have 
seen these leaves. They would have been thrown away centuries 
ago. The later writing is a lesson-book of the Gospel, probably 
of the thirteenth century. It does not often occur that biblical 
manuscripts are written upon leaves that have been used before, 
and still more rare is it to find biblical texts upon biblical texts. 
Samuel Prideaux Tregelles published the text in 186 1. I think 
that some slight additions could be made if the leaves were 
entrusted as above suggested to the revivifying care of the 
British Museum. 

n x 

The manuscript II is of the ninth century, and is in the 
Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, having been given to the 
Russian emperor by Mr. Parodi, of Smyrna, in the year 1859. 
— The next manuscript recalls the one named N, for it is 
on purple parchment, and contains Matthew and Mark. Its 



362 THE TEXT 

sign is 2, and it lies in the strong chest of the archbishop at 
Rossano, at the southern end of Italy. It is of the sixth century. 
The writing is, as in N, silver, and the names of God and Jesus 
are in gold. The text is not especially good, and agrees largely 
with the text of N. The charm of this volume lies in the fact 
that it contains a series of pictures illustrating scenes from the 
Gospels : the raising of Lazarus, the driving of the traders out of 
the temple, the ten virgins, the entry into Jerusalem, the foot- 
washing, the last Supper, the Lord's Supper in two scenes, Jesus 
before Pilate in two scenes, the healing of the man born blind, 
the cursing of the fig-tree. There is also a picture of the 
evangelist Mark, by whom a figure stands, probably Wisdom. 
The late Oskar von Gebhardt and Adolf Harnack, now in Berlin, 
discovered this manuscript in the year 1878, and wished to make 
a fine edition of it, but were forbidden to do so by the Chapter. 
They published a short description of it in 1880, and Gebhardt 
published the text of the two Gospels in 1883. In the year 1898, 
Arthur Haseloff gave a photographic edition of the pictures, and 
in 1907 Antonio Munoz an edition in coloured photography. 



$ * fi 2. 

In the year 1885, Pierre Batiffol went from Paris to Berat 
in Albania, and found another purple manuscript of the sixth 
century, <£, also containing Matthew and Mark in silver writing. 
This manuscript contains the strange long addition to Matt. 
20 28 . Batiffol published the text in 1887. — In the year 1886 I 
found, in the monastery called the Laura of Athanasius, on 
Mount Athos, a manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, con- 
taining a part of Mark, the whole of Luke, John, Acts, and the 
Catholic Epistles, and the Pauline Epistles and Hebrews down 
nearly to the end of the eighth chapter. Its sign is ty. It con- 
tains the short end of Mark. In the Catholic Epistles, First and 
Second Peter are put before James, showing a Western influence 
apparently. — In the same week I found in the monastery of 
Dionysius on Mount Athos, a complete manuscript of the four 
Gospels of the eighth or ninth century. Its sign is Q. — In 
the same week I found in the monastery of St. Andrew on 
Mount Athos, a manuscript of the four Gospels of the ninth or 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 363 

tenth century, written entirely in pages or columns shaped like 

a cross . There are four gaps in it. Its sign is 2. — Under 

T we have seven fragments at Mount Sinai, found and published 
by J. Rendel Harris. They are from the fifth to the ninth 
century. That is enough for the present in regard to the 
manuscripts of the four Gospels, and we may turn to the other 
books, beginning with Acts. 

Manuscripts of Acts. 

The manuscripts attached to the letters NABCD we have 
already spoken of above. The next manuscript of Acts, E, is at 
Oxford in the Bodleian. It contains almost the whole of Acts in 
Greek and Latin. It is of the end of the sixth century. The 
lines in this manuscript are sense-' ines and are very short, 
containing only two or three Greek or Latin words. It was written 
in the West, and it may have been written in Sardinia. At any 
rate it was once in Sardinia, for a later hand wrote at the end a 
ducal decree. If all signs do not fail, it was in England, and was 
used by the Venerable Bede, who died in 735. In an essay of 
his bearing on Acts he gives seventy and more readings, all of 
which are in this manuscript, and often only in this. It belonged 
to Laud the archbishop of Canterbury, and Chancellor of the 
University of Oxford, and he gave it to the University with many 
other manuscripts in the year 1636. Thomas Hearne published 
it in the year 17 15, yet not very exactly, and then Hansell in 
the year 1864, and Tischendorf in 1870. — The fragment of 
Acts named G was taken by Tischendorf from the wooden cover 
of a Syrian manuscript ; it is of the seventh century, and the 
text is not bad. It is in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg. — 
The Vatican Library owns G b , which is of the ninth century, and 
consists of six leaves. Hymns were written over the old text 
in the thirteenth century. The volume was once in the monastery 
of Grottaferrata. Giuseppe Cozza published five of the leaves 
in 1877 ; I found the sixth in 1886. 

The manuscript H is in the Este Library at Modena. It 
contains the Acts in uncial writing of the ninth century, and 



364 THE TEXT 

the Epistles in minuscle writing of the tenth century, — Like 
the Gospel fragments marked I, there are three fragments of 
Acts at St. Petersburg also marked I. They are of the fifth 
and seventh centuries. — A manuscript marked by the letter K, 
is of the ninth century, and is in the library of the Synod at 
Moscow. It contains the Acts with a chain, and the Epistles 
of Paul with the notes of Johannes Damascenus. It was 
formerly in the monastery of Dionysius on Mount Athos. — The 
next manuscript, L, is at Rome in the Angelica monastery 
of the Augustinian monks. It was written in the ninth century, 
and contains a large part of Acts, beginning with 8 10 , the 
Catholic Epistles, and the Epistles of Paul, closing with Heb. 
13 10 . — The manuscript P is in the Imperial Library at St. Peters- 
burg, and is of the ninth century. It contains, with many gaps, 
the Acts, the Catholic and Pauline Epistles, and Revelation. In 
the Acts and in First Peter the text is not so very good, and 
is much like that in the later uncials such as H and L. In the 
rest of the Epistles, however, and in the Revelation the text is 
very good. Sometimes it agrees with K, the Sinaiticus, and still 
more frequently it accompanies the Alexandrinus and Ephraim, 
that is to say, A and C. The old text was covered in the year 
1 30 1 by Euthalius' commentary to Acts and to the Pauline 
Epistles. The volume contains some fragment of Fourth 
Maccabees ; they are not palimpsest. Tischendorf published 
this manuscript in two different volumes of his "Sacred 
Monuments" in 1865 and 1869. — The next manuscript, marked 
S, I found in 1886 in the Laura on Mount Athos. It is of the 
eighth or ninth century, and contains Acts, the Catholic Epistles, 
and fragments of the Epistle of Paul. — A Vatican manuscript, 
which receives the letter 3, was discovered by Pierre Batiffol in 
1887. It is of the fifth century, and is palimpsest. There are 
fragments in it of Acts, and also of the Catholic and Pauline 
Epistles. It was until the end of the seventeenth century in 
the monastery of St. Mary of Patire near Rossano in Calabria, 
and passed thence into the monastery of St. Basil, where 
Montfaucon discovered them. Cardinal Mai also discovered 
them. And finally Batiffol came upon them while study- 
ing the Patire manuscripts in the Vatican, and they were 
made known. 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 365 



Manuscripts of Paul. 

In proceeding to the manuscripts of the Epistles of Paul it 
must be remembered that we have already said various things 
about the Codex Claromontanus at Paris while speaking of its 
companion, the other D, the Codex Bezse at Cambridge. This 
D contains the Epistles of Paul with only trifling exceptions. 
The text is very good. Tischendorf distinguished ten correctors. 
One of the objects of interest in this volume is a so-called 
stichometry. I mentioned a little way back, in speaking of the 
manuscript A and of the manuscript 566, certain lines given in 
the subscriptions to the four Gospels in those manuscripts, and I 
said that they were space lines. This stichometry gives a list of 
the books of the Old and the New Testaments with the number 
of these space lines that each contains. It was necessary to refer 
to this list several times while treating of the canon, because it 
gives with the New Testament books, Barnabas, the Shepherd of 
Hermas, and the Revelation of Peter. Whether written at the 
same time as the rest of the manuscript or not, this list is 
certainly very old. Beze used this manuscript in the second 
edition of his Greek New Testament in the year 1582. Once 
this manuscript met with a misfortune even after being placed in 
the Royal Library at Paris. A thief named Jean Aymont stole 
thirty-five leaves in the year 1707 and sold them in foreign parts. 
But happily the leaves came back. A Dutchman named Stosch 
gave one back in the year 1720, and Count Harley's son gave 
back thirty-four in the year 1729. Tischendorf published this 
manuscript in the year 1852. 

In the next manuscript, E, we have a rare chance to see 
clearly how a manuscript was copied in the ninth century, 
for this E is in the Greek a copy of the Claromontanus after 
it had been corrected by several hands. Really this should 
not have a letter; it should be attached to D. The way in 
which the fact of the copying from D can be proved is very 
interesting. For example, D had in Rom. 4 25 hiKanna-iv. One 
corrector put the accent in SiKatWiv. Another corrector aimed 
to change the word into $lkolio(tvvy)v, and he put v-qv for that 
last v but did not change the accent. In consequence of this 
we find in E 8iKcu<o<nvr)v. In Rom. 15 29 D had Tr\rjpo<f>opia. 



366 THE TEXT 

A corrector changed this to TrXrjpwfiaTi. The scribe of E ac- 
cepted the change, but thought well to keep also pia from the 
word 7r\r)pocf)opLa, and therefore we find in E the touchingly 
beautiful word TrX-qpioixaripia. In First Corinthians the Claro- 
montanus had at first in 15 5 /zero, ravra toi<? ei/Sexa. A corrector 
changed it to ctra tois Sa>Se/<u. The scribe of E shook the two 
up in a bag and wrote /xera rauctra rot? SwevScKa. Heb. io 33 
had at first in the Claromontanus oviSi£o//,ej/oi. A corrector put 
an obelus on the first and last letters to show that the word was 
to be considered as expunged, and then he wrote above it 
OcaTpL^op-evot. The scribe of E did really leave out the two 
obelised letters and then wrote vtSt^o/xevo^caTpi^o/xei/ot. One 
thing this E can do. It can tell us what D had in Rom. i 1 ' 7 . 



F G. 

The next manuscript is at Cambridge, England, in Trinity 
College. Its name is Codex Augiensis, from the monastery 
Augia Maior or Dives, which means Reichenau, a rich meadow ; 
this monastery was on an island in Lake Constance near 
Constance. It receives the letter F. It is of the end of the 
ninth century, and contains the Epistles of Paul, without Hebrews 
(except in Latin), and with a few gaps. With it we reach another 
member of a group of Greek-Latin manuscripts of which we 
have already seen three representatives in the Codex Bezae, 
the Claromontanus, and its St. Petersburg son. This is a 
beautiful book. The scribe that wrote it liked to write. In 
the Greek a point stands between every two words so that the 
Latin monk may, at least, know where each word begins and 
ends. That reminds one of old inscriptions. The Greek text 
is good. Frederic Henry Ambrose Scrivener published it in 
the year 1859. I shall have to return to it in a moment in 
connection with the following manuscript. 

A former Leipzig professor, Christian Friedrich Borner, once 
possessed a manuscript, and it is therefore named the Codex 
Bornerianus. From Borner it passed at his death to the Royal 
Library at Dresden. The letter for it is G. Borner lent it to 
Bentley, who kept it five years and longed to buy it, and had a 
copy made of it which is in Trinity College at Cambridge. Also 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 367 

of the ninth century, like F, it also contains the Epistles of Paul 
but not Hebrews. Of the six gaps in it, four are also found in F. 
Aganon, whose name we have already met, and Goddiskalkon, 
which is Gottschalk, are mentioned in the margin, and at one 
point there are some Irish verses. Christian Friedrich Matthai 
published it in 1791, and did his work very well. Now the 
Augiensis and the Bornerianus are surely related to each other, 
closely related. Some think they are brothers, and some think 
that one of them is the father of the other. In spite of minor 
differences they are much like each other. Among other agree- 
ments they both have the curious word ao-Tt£ofji€vos, which is no 
Greek word at all, but merely the result of misreading A as A, 
— O as C, — and Y as T, the proper word being Aoyi£oju,evo?. 
Should the Greek text of each of them not have been drawn 
from a common original, then the Greek in F would appear to 
have been taken from G. The aesthetic difficulty is the chief one 
here. For the Bornerianus is, as we said above of its mate A 
in St. Gallen, a rough coarse uneducated-looking book, whereas 
the Augiensis looks very dainty and well-bred. One shrinks 
from the thought that so ill-looking a father should have such 
a delicate son. Yet such things do occur, even in flesh and 
blood. 

H. 

Speaking of breeding, we pass at once to a very high bred 
book indeed, yet one which has experienced a serious fall in 
fortune, and has been sent wandering around the world in the 
bindings of other genealogically far less favoured volumes. It 
bears the letter H, and was written in the sixth century in large 
well-shaped letters which someone maltreated when they grew 
old and pale by tracing them anew in a very ugly and careless 
way. At present forty-one leaves of it are known, but new 
leaves may any day turn up in old bindings. The greater part of 
the leaves, twenty-two, are in the National Library at Paris. The 
Laura of St. Athanasius on Mount Athos has eight leaves. 
Russia has nine leaves, three of which are in two libraries at 
Moscow, three at St. Petersburg, and three at Kiev. And, lastly, 
there are two at Turin. That is in part the result of the work of 
Makarius, who in the year 12 18, in the Laura on Mount Athos, 



368 THE TEXT 

used some of these leaves for bookbinding. They contain 
fragments from a number of the Epistles of Paul, including 
Hebrews. These leaves are, I think, the oldest, aside from that 
subscription to Esther in the Codex Sinaiticus, that carry us back 
to the great library of Pamphilus at Caesarea of which we have 
spoken more than once. Indeed, if Tischendorf was right in 
dating that subscription as of the seventh century, and if we are 
right in thinking that this manuscript is of the sixth century, it 
was written before that collation was made. Henri Omont 
published the forty-one leaves. But strange as it may seem, 
there is something more to tell. Omont published one more 
page than the eighty-two pages, and J. Armitage Robinson and 
H. S. Cronin published that one more and fifteen more in 
addition, and yet no more leaves had been found. The secret 
was that these sixteen pages had printed themselves off on 
various of the forty-one leaves, and were now with great pains 
reproduced as though from the thin air by those scholars. 



I M N O Q R T. 

There is one fragment in two leaves at St. Petersburg which is 
lettered I and is of the fifth century, and contains a little of First 
Corinthians and a little of Titus. — In the British Museum there 
are two leaves, and in the City Library at Hamburg there are two 
leaves written entirely in red. They are M. They are of the ninth 
century, and give a part of First and Second Corinthians and of 
Hebrews. Tischendorf published the four leaves in 1855. — The 
letter N attaches to a fragment of the ninth century at St. Peters- 
burg with a few verses from Galatians and Hebrews. — The same 
Imperial Library owns O, with two leaves of the sixth century from 
Second Corinthians, and Q with five papyrus fragments of the 
fifth century with scattered bits from First Corinthians. — The 
library at Grottaferrata has a leaf from the close of the seventh 
century with ten verses from Second Corinthians. It is lettered 
R. — The letter T a stands for two little fragments in the Louvre 
at Paris, from the fourth to the sixth century, with a few words 
from First Timothy. — Under the letter T b are placed two leaves 
in the National Library at Paris of the ninth or tenth century, 
with seven verses of First Corinthians. — Seven fragments of 



LARGE LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 369 

papyrus of the fifth century from First Corinthians are at Sinai, 
and bear in our lists the letter I 14 . 

For the Revelation we need only refer to a single manuscript 
in the Vatican Library which has as its sign the letter B, and is of 
the tenth century. This manuscript offers an eminent example 
of the fact emphasised in treating of the canon, namely that the 
Revelation is, contrary to the custom with other books of the 
Bible, often found in non-biblical manuscripts. This is not a 
biblical manuscript. We find in it writings of Basil the Great, 
of Gregory of Nyssa, and of other Church writers. And the 
Revelation stands among these books. Tischendorf published 
the text in 1869. 

We have now seen the uncial manuscripts of the New 
Testament with a hasty glance as if we had passed by them in 
an express train. They contain among their number the most 
important witnesses to the text of the New Testament, and the 
presumption of age lies in their favour. Yet we should not 
forget that their quantity is by no means so great as the long 
description of them and the many letters used as signs might 
seem to indicate. Many of them are mere trifles. Each has, 
that must be insisted upon, its place and value. A bit of parch- 
ment with only a half a dozen words on it and no important reading 
among them may nevertheless offer some day a key to open the 
way to a connection between widely scattered texts, or to tell us 
the secret as to some date or place. But a large part of them 
only speak as direct authority for a very few interesting read- 
ings. We can almost count on our fingers those that range 
widely through the books outside of the four Gospels. We there- 
fore need to turn our attention to other manuscripts, to the 
small letter or minuscle manuscripts, and see whether in spite of 
their youth they may not be of service. The earliest of these 
overlap the large letter manuscripts. 



24 



3/0 



IV. 

SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRLPTS. 

The ninth century probably saw the first books written in 
this small letter. The large letters were too stiff, and in their 
several, individual isolation could not be written fast enough to 
satisfy the demands of the times which were growing ever more 
hasty. A passing observer might suppose that the cursive 
writing would have answered all purposes of quickness. That 
is true. The ancients wrote this running hand without any 
doubt as swiftly as we to-day write our letters and our scrawled 
notes. And it may well sometimes have happened that someone 
wrote a little of the New Testament text in cursive writing. But 
that, so far as we can see, never became a rule. We do not 
print our Bibles with our ugliest types. Not only the Bibles, and 
in particular the New Testaments or New Testament books, but 
also polite and learned literature in general, wished for a change. 
The large letters had become unwieldy. Either they were black, 
thick, and big, and devoured parchment, ink, and time, or they 
were small and delicate, and consumed time both for the writer 
and for the reader. The problem was to produce a script that 
could be written with tolerable speed and ease, connecting many 
of the letters without raising the pen. And this script must be 
so legible and so beautiful that it could be applied to works of 
literature and to sacred books without detracting from the agree- 
able impression desirable in the former or from the honourable 
treatment due to the latter. This problem was happily solved in 
the small letter writing, the minuscule. The word " cursive " is 
often applied to this hand, but I think it better to restrict that 
designation to the running hand to which it properly belongs. 
The cursive is not for these times a literary hand. The words 
uncial and minuscle, or large letter and small letter, are in a 
manner deceptive for a stranger who should take the terms as 
expressing of necessity a larger and smaller number of millimetres 
in the height and breadth of the letter used. Many of the large 



SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 37 1 

or uncial letters are much smaller than a great deal of the small 
or minuscle writing. It is, after all, an arbitrary distinction, and 
the names give no trouble as soon as it is understood to what 
script they apply. 

The small letter manuscripts are likely some day to give us 
much information in reference to the history of the text. They 
are numerous, and range widely through the lands and the 
centuries. Their lines are likely to close quickly if we succeed 
in gaining a few certain connections between time and place and 
handwriting and text form. In general it is to be emphasised 
that the testimony for the New Testament books which follow 
the Gospels is particularly in need of the help of the small letter 
manuscripts. These manuscripts are denoted by Arabic numbers. 
As there are hundreds of them I shall not pretend to go through 
the list book by book. It will be enough to describe characteristic 
points, or to call attention to peculiarities in reference to the 
manuscripts or to their history. 

The very first manuscript, 1, of the tenth century, contains all 
the books of the New Testament except the Revelation. It is in 
the University Library at Basel. Historically it is interesting to 
know that this book was used in the correction of the proofs of 
Erasmus' New Testament. Its text in the Gospels is good. 
That New Testament would have been much better in its Gospel 
text if it had followed this copy. — Unfortunately, 2, of the twelfth 
century, now in the same library, was handed over to the printers 
by Erasmus, and 2 has a bad text. It only contains the Gospels. — 
Number 5, at Paris, is a good manuscript. It is of the fourteenth 
century, and only lacks the Revelation. It has placed Colossians 
before Philippians, just as the Codex Claromontanus did. This 
volume was formerly in Calabria. 



13. 69. 124. 346. 

The manuscript 13, also in the National Library at Paris, 
may serve as an introduction to a series of manuscripts. Pos- 
sibly all of this series came from Southern Italy, from Calabria, 
or were copied from Calabrian manuscripts. The subscriptions 
say that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and Mark 
in Roman or Latin pw/xatort, but Luke in Greek. The pro- 



372 THE TEXT 

bably spurious words in Matt. i6 2 - 3 are omitted, and so are 
in Luke 22, vv. 43 and 44 . Then, too, the interpolation about 
the adulteress is not at John 7 s3 to 8 11 , but is placed directly 
after Luke 21 38 . This volume was written in Calabria or Sicily 
in the thirteenth century. W. H. Ferrar, of Dublin, observed 
that this manuscript was much like those numbered 69, 124, 
and 346, and collated them to prove it. Thomas Kingsmill 
Abbott completed the valuable work in 1877. Since that time 
several more copies have been found to belong to the same 
group. — Number 14, of the twelfth century, and at Paris, con- 
tains the Gospels, and is peculiar, and shows traces of a most 
excellent and ancient tradition in that after Mark 16 8 the words 
are written in gold : " In some of the copies, up to this point 
the evangelist is finished. But in many this also is added " ; 
and then the usual false ending vv. 9 " 20 follows. The story of the 
adulteress is omitted, properly. 

Another Parisian manuscript, it is of the fourteenth century, 
was very ingeniously gotten up. The number is 16. The 
Hebrew Bible printed in colours, the rainbow Bible, might be 
compared to this volume. But in this volume, which con- 
tains the Gospels in Greek and Latin, the writing itself is of 
the given colour, not the parchment, and that is much better. 
The general current of the Gospel narrative is in vermilion. 
The words of Jesus, the genealogy of Jesus, and the words of 
the angel are in crimson. The words taken from the Old 
Testament, the words of the disciples and of Zacharias, Elisabeth, 
Mary, Simeon, and John the Baptist, are in blue. And, finally, 
the words of the Pharisees, of the people from the multitude, 
of Judas Iscariot, of the centurion, of the devil, and of the 
scribes, are in black. The words of the shepherds are also 
black ; but I am inclined to think that that was an oversight. 
This manuscript contains beautiful pictures. In one way it has 
an interest for a painter or an art-critic who cares to go into the 
details and learn how the painters of that day and place worked, 
for there are some pictures that are only begun, only have a 
few lines laid on. I have no doubt that it was at least in 
-Dart the work of an Armenian ; there are Armenian as well 
as Greek numbers for the quires, and the quires are of five, 
not of four, double leaves. 



SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 373 



Hermonymos. 

Number 17 introduces us again to a series of manuscripts. 
But these manuscripts are not bound together by the text used, 
as was the case in the group attaching to manuscript 13, for 
the centre is the scribe who wrote them. George Hermony- 
mos, born in Sparta, came to Paris in 1472, and taught Greek 
and copied Greek manuscripts, quite a number in Rome 
too. I have seen at least a dozen manuscripts written by him. 
His handwriting was not especially beautiful, but it was char- 
acteristic. I think I never saw, certainly I have very rarely 
seen, other manuscripts, manuscripts written by other scribes, 
that had a handwriting like his. It is very angular. — Num- 
ber 33, also at Paris, has all the books except the Revelation, 
and has a very exceptionally good text. It is of the ninth or 
tenth century. — In number 38 we come in contact with high 
personages. This manuscript has the New Testament save 
Revelation, and was written at the command of the Emperor 
Michael Palseologus, who presented it in the year 1269 or 
1270 to Louis ix. of France. — The manuscript 39 takes our 
thoughts back to H of the Epistles of Paul, the leaves 
that are scattered all over. There we see Makarius, a monk, in 
the year 12 18 in the Laura of St. Athanasius on Mount Athos. 
Now this manuscript was written apparently at Constantinople, 
and in the patriarchal residence there under the patriarch Sergius 
the Second, and in the year 12 18 Makarius carried it to the 
Laura on Mount Athos. 

Serbopulos. 

Number 47 is a fat little book in the Bodleian at Oxford. 
It was written by John Serbopulos in England in the fifteenth 
century. He copied it out of number 54. That 54 has the note 
after John 8 2 " In some copies thus " and adds 8 3 * 11 . Serbopulos 
copied the words " in some copies thus " into the text as if it were 
a part of the Gospel. — The manuscript 54 was written in the year 
1338 by a monk Theodosius "with three fingers." When I first 
saw this expression I supposed it to refer to a mutilated hand. 
Now I do not think so. It occurs now and then in manuscripts, 



374 THE TEXT 

and alludes, I take it, to the fact that the pen is held between 
the thumb and the forefinger and the middle finger. Serbopulos' 
writing may be seen on the margin of two leaves, where he adds 
some words left out by Theodosius. At least three other 
manuscripts besides 47 are in some way related to this one. — 
One of them is number 56, which Serbopulos also wrote. In 
this manuscript he copied off some verses that Theodosius had 
written in number 54 ; but put his own name Johannes in. The 
consequence was that it was supposed to be the Apostle John 
that was meant. 

61. 

The manuscript numbered 61 is at Dublin in Trinity Col- 
lege, and has a history. It is doubtless related to Serbopulos' 
group just mentioned. It was probably written in England in 
the sixteenth century, and we are pretty sure that the text of 
the Gospels was drawn from number 56. Erasmus, of course, 
did not have First John 5 7 - 8 , the three heavenly witnesses, 
in his New Testament, for no one dreamed of putting those 
words into the Greek text save the Alcala editors who went 
before Erasmus. In discussing the matter with a bigoted 
opponent, Erasmus was so thoughtless as to write that he would 
put the words in if they could be found in a Greek manuscript. 
There is every reason to believe that this manuscript was 
written, with the words added, to compel Erasmus to add them, 
as he then did, " for his oath's sake," like Herod, to his text. It 
was a great pity that Erasmus did it. It has taken centuries to 
get the words out again. The paper on which this volume is 
written is very thick and is heavily glazed. That does not show 
in general, because it is so white. The page, however, upon 
which that spurious text is found has been " pawed " to such an 
extent by curious visitors, whose acquaintance with soap and its 
use appears to have been a distant one, that the paper has 
been well browned, and therefore the glazing is distinctly seen. 
This deceived a scholar so thoroughly that he printed the 
statement that this page had been glazed. — Number 69 is 
like the manuscript E in one thing, it is in the wrong place. 
It was written in the fifteenth century, and contains the whole 
New Testament. It should properly be in a great library at 



SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 375 

Oxford or Cambridge, or in the British Museum. Instead of 
that it is up at the top of the Town Hall in Leicester in a 
sheet-iron box, if I remember aright, along with all kinds of 
town papers. I hope that the town council will some day give 
it to the British Museum. 



Theodore Hagiopetritis. 

Another group attaching to a scribe must now be mentioned, 
but it is an older group than those of George Hermonymos and 
John Serbopulos, and it is not a Western but an Eastern group. 
It begins with number 74, one of Archbishop Wake's manuscripts 
in Christ Church, Oxford. This was doubtless written about 
the end of the thirteenth century. The scribe was Theodore 
of Agiopetros, a village in Arcadia. A bishop Apollonados 
Theosteriktos made a present of it to "the monastery of St. 
Gregory called rdv Tracrx^viov, lying on the mountain of the great 
field." It was later in the monastery Pantokrator on Mount 
Athos, and was brought from there to England in the year 1727. 
Theodore Hagiopetritis wrote also number 234 in the year 1278, 
number 856 in the year 1280, number 484 in the year 1292, 
number 483 in the year 1295, and number 412 in the year 1301. 
He also wrote in 1295 a synararion now at Moscow. Number 
90 is a late copy of a manuscript that he wrote in 1293. 



Confused Genealogies. 

Number 80 belongs to Mr. Lesoeuf at Paris. It gives an 
example of a curious mistake in copying which does not often 
occur. The genealogy in Luke 3 23 - 38 presents a very strange 
complexion. Upon examination it is clear that this manuscript 
was copied from one that had twenty-three lines on a page, and, 
further, that in that manuscript the genealogy was written in 
three columns with the names arranged in the order of the 
columns, not in the order of the lines. Then the scribe of 80 
copied the genealogy off in the order of the lines, causing dire 
confusion, and making everybody the son of some wrong man : 
tov iwpdfji' tov Ka'ivdv tov Iwarj' tov co'/aw/x* tov ivws. One would 



376 THE TEXT 

have thought that the scribe would have noticed the false family 
combinations. He must have copied very mechanically not to see 
the impossibility of the relationship in many cases. — Let us, how- 
ever, pass at once to number 109. It is of the year 1326, and is in 
the British Museum. The manuscript from which it was copied 
had the genealogy in Luke in two columns of twenty-eight lines 
each and following the columns. The scribe of 109 copied it 
then, following the lines. The conditions of things is much 
worse than in 80, and would appear to be blasphemous, were it 
not clearly an error of mere stupidity. It so happened in that 
original — for we can reproduce it with mathematical exactness 
from these tangled names — that the names, which of course end, 
conclude, rise to the apex in God, did not fill the last column. 
In consequence the name of God came to stand within the list 
instead of at the close of it. And God is actually said to have 
been the son of Aram, and the source of all things is not God 
but Phares. It is hard enough to imagine how a monk could 
have written, without observing it, a wrong father for Jesse or 
David or Solomon. But that he should calmly put God as the 
son of Aram, passes all fancy. — The next book, no, does not 
belong here at all. It is of the sixteenth century, and is called 
the Codex Ravianus. It is in the Royal Library at Berlin. 
Instead, however, of being a copy of some old manuscript, it is 
a copy of the New Testament as it stands in the printed 
Complutensian polyglott, and has also a few readings from 
Erasmus and Stephens. 



The Story of the Adulteress. 

Number 129 was written in the twelfth century by Eustathius. 
The story of the adulteress was not in the Gospel of John in 
the example from which the text was copied. At the close 
of the Gospel, however, on the last leaf of the manuscript, 
Eustathius wrote : We have written the chapter about the 
adulteress found in many copies. And then he adds John 
8 3-11 . — Number 145 has the paragraph about the adulteress in 
the text, but notes thereby : This chapter is lacking in many 
copies. — The manuscript 157 is a very good one. It is of the 
twelfth century, and is in the Vatican Library. It was written for 



SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 377 

John the Second, Porphyrogenitus, who ruled 11 18 to 1148. — 
In 237, a manuscript of the tenth century at Moscow in the 
library of the Synod, the story of the adulteress is at the end of 
the Gospel of John as a separate affair, and marked as the lesson 
"for one repenting. Out of the Gospel according to John." 
And at the end of the lesson is the remark : " This Gospel [that 
means : this lesson] is not found in the more accurate of the 
copies." The way in which the passage is given shows that the 
scribe got it out of a manuscript of a book of the lessons from 
the Gospels, and that it stood among the so-called " various " 
Gospels at the end of that book, not in the regular series of 
lessons. — Not very different from that, we find in number 259 
at Moscow, also in the library of the Synod, the passage about 
the adulteress after the close of the Gospel, with the sentence : 
"There is found in some copies also this chapter (some such 
chapter) attached to the Gospel according to John." 

Number 288 is one of the books that were cut into several parts, 
probably in order to sell them better. Matthew is in the Bodleian 
at Oxford, Luke in the National Library at Paris, and John in the 
library of the Institute at Paris. Where Mark is, if it still exists, 
I do not know. It is on the paper quires 13 to 19, marked in 
Greek ty' to 16'. George Hermonymos wrote these four Gospels 
in his angular hand. — In number 296 we have a specimen of the 
writing of Angelo Vergece of the sixteenth century. It is in the 
National Library at Paris. The types for Greek in the royal 
printing-office at Paris, which was also used by Robert Estienne, 
Stephens, are said to have been cut after the writing of this 
skilful and artistic scribe. At the end Vergece wrote an Amen, 
dfxrjv, very much curled up and twisted like a monogram ; and a 
scholar who described this manuscript managed to make the 
year 1428 out of the word. That was very ingenious, but 
Vergece must have been born long after that date. 

The manuscript 346 of the twelfth century in the Ambrosiana 
at Milan belongs to the group mentioned under number 13. It 
was probably written in Calabria. This volume presents in 
Matt, i 16 , a rare reading, and one which would be of much 
moment for the development of Christianity, if Christianity 
developed upon the lines of scientific research instead of upon 
the lines of weak tradition. This is the reading also found in 
some Old-Latin and Old-Syrian manuscripts : " Joseph, to 



3/8 THE TEXT 

whom the Virgin Mary was betrothed, begat Jesus called the 
Christ." 

The manuscript 365, the number of the days of the year, 
is at Florence in the Laurentiana. An amusing thing happened 
in connection with it. It had been placed in the list of the 
manuscripts by Scholz. Dean Burgon while at Florence tried 
to find it. The librarian assured him that no such manuscript 
ever had existed there, and its appearance in the list was supposed 
to be a specimen of the most extraordinary carelessness on the 
part of Scholz, who had even stated that he had collated select 
passages in this non-existent volume. I had never observed 
such work on Scholz' part, and was therefore carious to learn 
how the case might stand. On going to the Laurentiana, of 
course I examined first of all the catalogues which were on a 
shelf at the service of all visitors. The great printed catalogue 
was made by Angelo Maria Bandini, who died in 1800. At 
the end of the third volume I found on the fly-leaves the 
description of this, and I think of a few other manuscripts, 
written there by Bandini himself. I said nothing about it. I 
simply ordered the book among others, and it was brought to 
me by the attendant at once without remark. Scholz had not 
been so careless after all, but only a little more accurate than 
had been supposed. — Number 418, a manuscript of the fifteenth 
century at Venice in the Marciana, is of interest for the history 
of the Lord's Prayer. It is well known that the doxology 
in that prayer is spurious. This volume gives the doxology 
in the following form: "And the glory of the Father and of 
the Son and of the Holy Spirit unto the ages." It is probably 
the liturgical form to which the scribe who wrote this manuscript 
was accustomed. — The manuscript numbered 431 may be con- 
sidered as one raised from the dead. It belongs to the library 
of the Roman Catholic theological seminary at Strassburg, and 
is of the twelfth century. Everyone thought that it had perished 
during the siege and capture of Strassburg by the Germans in 
1870. But Albert Ehrhard, now happily again in Strassburg, 
discovered the manuscript years ago safe and sound. — Fine goods 
are sometimes said to be done up in small packages. That 
would fit number 461, which is not more than about seventeen 
centimetres high and ten broad. It was written by a monk 
Nicholas in the year 835, and is therefore one of the oldest 



SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 379 

Greek manuscripts in small letters that is known. Formerly it 
was at St. Saba, south-east of Jerusalem. 



Joasaph. 

Number 480, written in the year 1366, is one of two concentric 
groups of manuscripts. It is written in a beautiful hand by the 
monk Joasaph. The first group is, then, of the manuscripts written 
by Joasaph. But I find that Joasaph is a member of a widespread 
school of scribes that did good work through centuries, and this 
school forms the second group. — Number 565, a manuscript of the 
ninth or tenth century in the Imperial Library at St. Petersburg, 
corresponds in its make to the books mentioned by Theonas, for 
its parchment is purple and the writing is golden. Its text is of 
high value for the determination of the re-wrought text which we 
spoke of under the Codex Bezse. — The manuscript 651, of the 
eleventh or twelfth century, in Dessau, was one of the first manu- 
scripts, with one in Athens, in which I found the peculiar reading 
in John 8 9 , where instead of d/covo-ai/res it has dmyivwo-Kovre?, and 
places before our eyes the dramatic scene in which Jesus writes in 
the sand evos kKacrrov avTUiv ras d/xapn'as, the sins of each one of 
the accusing Pharisees who have brought the adulteress before 
Him. The eldest reads his sin and hurries away, and the rest 
follow, each after seeing that his sin is known. I have since found 
this reading in a number of manuscripts, especially upon Mount 
Athos. — Number 699 is a divided manuscript of the eleventh 
century, containing, save four small gaps, the whole New Testa- 
ment. Much of it is in the British Museum, but Ephesians 
and Revelation are at Highgate, where the manuscripts are, or 
used to be, most carelessly guarded. Highgate School should 
give all its manuscripts to, or deposit them in, the British 
Museum, and at the least give this fragment to the Museum so 
as to complete the copy of the New Testament. It was Edward 
A. Guy who discovered that the two manuscripts belonged 
together. 

Number 703 is, so far as I know, a wanderer. It is never- 
theless surely resting in somebody's library, and I wish that 
a reader of these lines would recognise it and write to me about 
it. I saw it at Quaritch's a number of years ago. It is of the year 



380 THE TEXT 

1 25 1, and can be further recognised by the circumstance that 
leaves three and six were cut out of quire 41, //.a', and new leaves, 
three, six, and seven, thrust in, containing John 7 18 - 28 and 7 48 - 
8 17 . That was done in order to insert the story of the adulteress, 
which was not in the original manuscript. Often we find a single 
leaf cut out and two put in, in order to add that spurious passage. 
In John 1 28 the word firjOaftapa was changed by a later hand to 
ftrjOavLa. In 8 2 it reads ftaOeos rjXOev 6 is, and in 8 5 vofim rj/xw, 
fxuivorrjs, and in 8 7 ava/3Aet//us. At the beginning are some 
chronological remarks, in which the scribe put in by mistake 
the year 1259 instead of 1251. 



Vulgarius. 

Number 817 carries us back to Basel, where we found 
numbers 1 and 2, and to Erasmus' edition of the New Testa- 
ment. This manuscript is of the fifteenth century, and is in 
the University Library at Basel, having formerly belonged to the 
Dominicans there. On the title-page of Erasmus' first edition 
of the New Testament he named among the old writers from 
whom he had drawn notes, a Vulgarius. It really seems as if 
he did not know who this Vulgarius was. But he found out ; 
doubtless someone told him, having seen the name on that title 
and in his commentary. I did not know where he got the 
name until in 1885 I examined the manuscripts at Basel, and 
found on the front cover of this one the word Vulgarius. Then 
all was clear. This was a copy of the Gospels with the com- 
mentary of Theophylact of Bulgaria. In Greek B is pronounced 
like our V. Long before Erasmus some monk has then written, 
according to the Greek pronunciation, on this volume Vulgarius 
as the equivalent of BovXydpios, the Bulgarian. The heading of 
the commentary inside had been so much defaced as to be for a 
hasty glance illegible, and Erasmus had been content to use the 
name found on the cover of the book. 

The manuscript 1076, in the Laura of St. Athanasius on 
Mount Athos, written in the tenth century, places the passage 
about the adulteress after the close of John with the remark : 
"There is also something else found in old copies, which we have 
thought well to write at the end of the same Gospel, which is 



SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 38 1 

what follows." — Numbers 1098 to 1 109 have probably all perished. 
They were in the monastery of Simopetra on Mount Athos, where 
I saw them in passing in 1886. The library was burned in 
1 89 1. — It was similarly supposed that the books of the Greek 
Gymnasium at Saloniki or Thessalonica were destroyed by fire. 
I had numbered the New Testament volumes in 1886. I think 
that some of them are still there. Others took wings during the 
confusion of the fire, and have found a place in another Eastern 
library.— Number n 94, of the tenth or eleventh century, at 
Mount Sinai, "was written on the island Patmos, in the cave 
where the holy John the Theologian saw the Revelation, by the 
hand of John, a monk, for the head monk Theoktistos." That 
name is probably a favourite one on Patmos. I saw there a 
Theoktistos over eighty years of age, living as a hermit away off 
in a lonely corner of the mountains. — It will be remembered that 
we spoke of John as dictating his Gospel to Prochorus. Number 
1322, in the library of the patriarch of Jerusalem has the picture 
of John and Prochorus, and gives the hand of the Lord reaching 
forth from the cloud as I described it ; and John says to Prochorus : 
" Child Prochorus, what thou hearest from me, that write." — The 
manuscript 1346, in the patriarchal library at Jerusalem, reminds 
us of a man who sinned much against the manuscripts, whose 
memory is noisome not only in his home surroundings, but also 
through the monasteries of the East. Two leaves of this manu- 
script of the Gospels are at St. Petersburg. The Imperial Library 
there contains a large number of fine leaves from valuable 
manuscripts which Porfiri Uspenski of Kiev cut, tore, stole out of 
all manner of books in the large Eastern libraries. How coarse 
and brutal he must have been ! 



Acts and Catholic Epistles. 

The manuscripts of Acts and of the Catholic Epistles begin 
a new series of numbers. Number 2 among them is, like number 
2 in the manuscripts of the Gospels, the volume that Erasmus 
sent to the printers so that they should set up the Acts and 
the Catholic Epistles and the Pauline Epistles from it. It is in 
the University Library at Basel. — The manuscript numbered 162 
is of the fourteenth century, and is in the Vatican Library at 



382 THE TEXT 

Rome. It contains the Acts and all the Epistles, both Greek 
and Latin, and the Greek text is made to conform to the Vulgate 
Latin text. Words are put in a different order. Sometimes the 
division of lines and syllables in the Greek is assimilated to that 
in the Latin text. It is as if the scribe had foreseen the decree 
of the Council of Trent, that the Vulgate should be the one 
authentic text, the measure for the correctness of everything else. 
This manuscript has a particularly exceptional position. It will 
be remembered that we saw above the probability that a 
Dublin manuscript had been written for the purpose of forcing 
Erasmus according to his promise to put 1 John 5"- 8 into his edition, 
he having said that he would put it in if it were shown to him 
in a single Greek manuscript. Now at that time no one knew 
anything of this manuscript. And if anyone had known of it, 
it would have given him another shape of the verse. For there 
can be no reasonable doubt that this interpolation is part and 
parcel of the assimilation of the Greek text in this manuscript to 
the Latin text, and that by someone who was not a good Greek 
scholar. It is therefore not in the least degree a Greek witness for 
the authenticity of the spurious words. — The manuscript 311 is 
instructive for this 1 John 5 7 - 8 - At the word "three," rpets, in 
1 John 5 7 is the marginal note : " The Holy Spirit, and the Father, 
and Himself of Himself." — I referred above to a manuscript of 
the Gospels written by George Hermonymos, which was partly in 
three libraries, and partly, Mark, of unknown residence. Number 
331 here is made up of James and First and Second Peter in the 
Vatican Library at Rome, and of the Epistles of Paul in four 
parts in the National Library at Paris, all of which I connected 
with each other in 1885 and 1886. The quires 6-9 and 27-31, 
or s'-& and K^'-Xa, with 2 Pet. 3 16 -Jude 25 and 2 Cor. 13 1 - 
Eph. 6 24 , are still to be sought for. It was also written by 
George Hermonymos, and appears to be related to at least two 
other manuscripts of these books. 

It is not necessary to delay over any of the manuscripts which 
begin with the Epistles of Paul. We have already spoken of 
many of the manuscripts containing these Epistles, but beginning 
with the Gospels or the Acts or Catholic Epistles. The manuscript 
numbered 1 in the Revelation is again a manuscript that was used 
by Erasmus. It is the only manuscript that he had for Revela- 
tion, and the defects of various kinds in these pages have left 



SMALL LETTER GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 383 

their stamp upon Erasmus' edition of that book. For centuries 
this volume lay hidden. Finally, Franz Delitzsch, then at 
Erlangen, discovered it in the library of the family Ottingen- 
Wallerstein in Mayhingen. The text is a good text, but it is easy 
to confuse it at some points with the accompanying commentary 
of Andrew of Caesarea, and Erasmus did in one place consider 
words of commentary to be text. Then again the end of Revela- 
tion (22 16 " 21 ) was lacking, and this as well as trifles elsewhere 
Erasmus translated from the Latin into mediocre Greek for 
his text. This manuscript brings before us the one kind of 
manuscripts of the Revelation, the manuscripts which present 
the text with the commentary of Andrew or of Arethas of Caesarea. 
Of these manuscripts there are a number, and it is to be expected 
that they will in a large measure be from one or two antitypes, 
and present but one or two types of text. One type is to be looked 
for, if it can be proved that Arethas adopted the text used by his 
acknowledged predecessor Andrew. Should, however, Arethas 
have made many changes in the text of Andrew, then two types 
of text would be before us in these commentaries. That is, then, 
one kind of text for Revelation, whether in one or two types. 

The other kind of text is that which is scattered among 
non-biblical manuscripts. This is likely to be of different types. 
As specimens of this position of Revelation in non-biblical 
manuscripts we saw above the manuscript in the Vatican Library 
denoted as B. Here we may mention 18, which is simply 
the quires 13 to 15 out of a manuscript which will be sure to 
have been non-biblical, — then number 31, which begins with 
Dionysius the Areopagite ; — number 32 is again probably torn 
from a general theological manuscript, and has at the end an 
essay of Theodore Prodromos ; — number 49 is in a volume of 
the orations of Gregory of Nazianzus ; — number 50 is combined 
with lives of the saints ; — number 58 contains Job, that is 
biblical, but also Justin's Exhortation to the Greeks ; — number 
61 contains various writings of Basil, Theodoret, and Maximus ; 
— number 65 contains works of Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and 
Peter of Alexandria; — and 81 contains much from Gregory of 
Nyssa. That is enough to show the point referred to. 

So much for the small letter manuscripts of the continuous 
text of the books of the New Testament. We now turn to tre 
books which have a liturgical aim. 



3*4 



V. 

LESSON-BOOKS. 

When treating of the criticism of the canon we had occasion 
more than once to refer to the reading of the books of the New 
Testament in church. So long as this reading took place upon 
the basis of the ordinary manuscripts of the text of these books 
it will have had no great influence upon the form of the text in 
one way or the other, in conserving old forms or in introducing 
changes of any kind whatsoever. Introductory words for these 
lessons drawn from the manuscripts of the continuous text may 
have been originally added verbally, and gradually written on the 
margin at the proper places. This latter habit will have served 
as a transition to another kind of manuscript. For in time it 
will have become irksome to take the regularly used lessons from 
a general text, in which the clergyman will not have been able so 
quickly or so clearly to catch the proper beginning or the due 
ending of the passage for the day. The time came at which the 
clergy, having a fixed series of lessons to read and re-read, placed 
these lessons in special books, every lesson being supplied with 
the necessary words of introduction and with such more trifling 
modifications as might be incident to and necessary in detaching 
the section from the surrounding text. Thus the Church came 
to have lesson-books. 

These lesson-books, especially those of the Gospels, soon be- 
came the chief ornaments of the library of the churches. The 
Gospel lesson-book was carried through the church at the chief 
service, was held aloft to the view of all at a solemn moment 
in the services. It was then necessary that it be ornamented 
in the highest manner possible. The front cover was set with 
such precious stones as could be obtained. In the middle of it 
there was often a heavy silver crucifix. The writing used was, 
of course, at first the large letter or uncial, and those large 
letters may have continued to be used in these lesson-books even 
after they had passed out of fashion in other works, and even 



LESSON-BOOKS 385 

in the copies of the scripture with the continuous text. At the 
beginning of each lesson stood in the better copies a large letter 
that was at least red, but perhaps painted also with blue and 
yellow, or was traced in most delicate combinations of colours 
and of gold. Sometimes these letters were formed into animals 
or men, perhaps occasionally hinting even at a scene spoken of 
in the lesson. 

The volume which contained the lessons from the Gospels was 
called a " Gospel," evayytkiov. We could fancy to ourselves a 
certain propriety in this name, as though the distinctions of the 
four evangelists were here to be sunk in the presentation of the 
one " Gospel " lying at the foundation of all they give. But this 
fancy does not fit, seeing that a large part of the individuality ol 
the evangelists remains even in the books of lessons, and we 
know also that at a very early age the four Gospels themselves 
were designated more than once as "the Gospel." 

We find in the reading-books two parts, each of which 
embraces the whole year. At first it seems strange that the 
lessons should be given twice for the year, and it might be 
suggested that there should be but one series of lessons from 
beginning to end. But that would not be easy. The Church 
brought over, alas, from Judaism a movable Easter, and we are 
many of us still bound by this unchristian variable day. The 
consequence was that the two parts of the Gospel — we shall for 
the sake of simplicity now speak chiefly of the Gospel — were 
devoted respectively to the movable and to the fixed year, and 
thus give the year twice. We shall, however, see that the two 
years do not begin at the same point of time. Nowadays in the 
West the church-year begins largely with the first Sunday of 
advent. That has nothing to do with the Greek Church. 

The church-year in the East begins, not with the quiet scene 
at the manger accompanied by the heavenly strains of angels, but 
with the blaze of light at the resurrection, with the triumphant 
return from the dead, with the heralding of the conquest over 
death itself. Seven weeks bring us to Whitsuntide, where a new 
section of the book opens. Here in this section one part of the 
movableness or mutability of the lessons comes into play. For 
according to the advance or recession of Easter there remains for 
the time after Whitsuntide a larger or smaller number of weeks 
before what we call — it is nearly the same thing — Michaelmas, 
25 



386 THE TEXT 

but what the Greeks call New Year. If I am not mistaken this 
New Year is, like Easter and like the English designation of 
Sunday or the Lord's day as Sabbath, something borrowed from 
Judaism, and this therefore is a continuation of the Jewish New 
Year, Head of the Year, the Seleucidian or Syro-Macedonian 
year. The book provides for seventeen weeks, but that number 
rarely or never occurs. Then from September, though some- 
times not from the first day of the month but from the Sunday 
after the festival of the cross on September fourteenth, a new 
series of lessons begins. The beginning of this series of lessons 
is the one fixed point, so far as I can see, in the whole movable 
year, and betrays therefore the presence in the ancient Church 
of a practical respect for the given New Year, even though we 
may ask whether all Christians recognised the connection of the 
year with Jewish habit or not. It was the time of the equal day 
and night. The lessons that began here were again compelled 
to suit themselves to the motion of the feasts, and to fill out the 
time that separated September from Lent. The lenten lessons 
formed a compact mass by themselves, closing with the evening 
of Holy Saturday, and giving place anew to the Easter celebration 
at midnight. This is the movable year. 

Of course, the fixed year cannot begin at the same place, 
cannot depend upon the Passover feast wandering with the 
Israelites in the desert. The fixed year returns to the Jewish or 
Syro-Macedonian year, and begins with the first of September. 
It cleaves to the months and the days. It is called a " month- 
reckoning " or " month-booking," a menologion. Saint after 
saint is marshalled before us. Christmas rises to view, and then 
Epiphany. And it closes its round on the thirty-first of August 
with the laying away of the girdle of the Virgin Mary in the 
Chalkopratia at Constantinople. 

At the first blush it might seem as if we had with these two 
divisions, with the movable and with the fixed year, exhausted 
the possible need for Gospel lessons. That is not the case. 
One of the greatest festivals in the East, and indeed in Europe 
as well, is the festal day of the local church. Now that birthday 
of the church is, of course, not a part of the movable year. It is 
for each single church a given fixed day. This day varies, 
however, with the single churches. One may have been dedi- 
cated on the tenth of April, another on the twentieth of July, 



LESSON-BOOKS 387 

and the lesson appointed for the saints of those particular days 
may have no possible connection with the dedication of a Church. 
In the same way there are funeral services that agree with neither 
year. There are continually earthquakes, and these too refuse to 
bind themselves to a day and an hour. People repent of their 
sins — perhaps not quite so often as would be desirable — and 
they cannot be requested to save up their feelings of a change 
of heart until a particular day thereunto set. Armies secure 
victories, and the Church must celebrate them then, and not 
next Whitsuntide, and not on the eighteenth of the next or 
any other month. There must therefore, for these and for similarly 
unmanageable occasions, be still a third and a very short series of 
lessons for various purposes. Therewith the book closes. 

The method in which the ancient Church chose the lessons 
for all these movable and immovable days leads us far into the 
unknown regions of the past history of Christianity. There are, 
so much is plain, at least three different lines of lessons in the 
movable year, and it is possible that there were still more, only 
that we can no longer distinguish, or have not yet succeeded 
in distinguishing, them. It seems to me likely that at an 
extremely early date the lessons were chosen for the Sundays. 
At that date, and therefore we must go very far back, the Church 
still celebrated, certainly not only Sunday but also the Jewish 
Sabbath, not the false English Sabbath but Saturday. And it 
seems probable that then the lessons for the Saturdays or 
Sabbaths were still from the Old Testament. At a later time, 
but still at an early period, the Gospel lessons for the Saturdays or 
Sabbaths were chosen. 

We must stand still a moment here. The fact that the lessons 
were chosen for the Saturdays shows us that the Saturday or Sabbath 
was still especially celebrated, and that forces us to the same con- 
clusion, stated a line or two back, for the preceding period. The 
celebration of Saturday or Sabbath must have been an original, 
Jewish-Christian observance, cannot have been a later addition to 
the Christian Sunday. And the order of time as to the choice of 
these two lines of lessons is for this reason a necessity, because 
it would be inconceivable that the Saturday or Sabbath lessons 
should have been chosen first, and that at that time the Sunday 
lessons remained Old Testament lessons. A body might be in- 
clined to fancy that the Old Testament lessons were retained for 



388 THE TEXT 

Sunday as being more certainly sacred, even after the Church had 
proceeded to choose Saturday or Sabbath lessons from the 
Gospels. I regard that as totally impossible. It seems to me 
that the moment that the distinctively exceptional and divine 
character of the Gospels became clear to the Christian Churches, 
that at that moment they will have proceeded to set for the 
Church services for Sunday lessons from the Gospels. The 
reasons that I do not assume a determination of these lessons 
for both these neighbouring great days at one single time is that 
the two lines are independent of each other. For the first the 
Sabbath or Saturday lessons probably remained the Jewish Old 
Testament lessons. At a still later period, at one which I at 
present cannot even approximately fix, the Gospel lessons for the 
week-days were chosen and formed a line for themselves. So 
much for the movable year. 

The lessons for the fixed year were, I am inclined to think, not 
chosen at one time, but at first saint by saint and day by day. 
It would be possible that after the year was tolerably, well filled 
some one should have set about completing it, fitting saints to 
and into days that had remained saint-less, and assigning Gospels 
to their memory. Aside from the regular lesson-books, we some- 
times find in liturgical manuscripts a set of Gospels for a week, 
so that any and every day could at once be suited with a lesson. 
Monday was the day of the angels, Tuesday of John the Baptist, 
Wednesday of the Virgin, but called in Greek invariably " the 
bearer of God," Thursday of the holy apostles, and Friday the 
day of the crucifixion. For Saturday and Sunday nothing was 
given, because they had the regular lessons, the backbone of 
the determination of all lessons. It might be queried whether 
some such set of weekly Gospels or week-day Gospels had 
preceded the choice of lessons for every single day. I could 
conceive of such a thing, yet at present I do not think it likely, 
because I cannot remember finding this week of Gospel lessons 
in other than comparatively young manuscripts. 

It was very fitting that the Greek Church should place at the 
head of all the Gospels on the opening " holy and great Sunday 
of Easter," rrj ay la koX /xcydXr] KvpLCLKr) rov Trd(T\a, the beginning 
of the Gospel of John : In the beginning was the Word. This 
Gospel, with but one or two exceptions, then fills the Sundays and 
Saturdays and week-days for the seven weeks until Whitsuntide. 



LESSON-BOOKS 389 

The close is an interesting one both for the textual critic and 
for the Christian in general. The last lesson, the lesson for 
Whitsunday, has no trace of the story of the adulteress between 
John 7 52 and 8 12 , — that is for the critic. For the general 
Christian it is a beautiful ending for the lessons which began 
with : In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
God : to read Jesus's proclamation of Himself in John 8 12 : 
"lam the light of the world. He that folio we th Me shall not 
walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." At the close 
of this section it must be observed that by far the greater 
majority, that almost all of the books of lessons have all the 
lessons for every day up to this point. From this point, however, 
until Lent a very great many of the books do not give the daily 
lessons, but only those for the Saturdays and the Sundays. 

With the day after Whitsunday, with Whitmonday, the Gospel 
according to Matthew comes in, and it supplies the Saturdays 
and Sundays for seventeen weeks, tentatively, as above explained, 
thus caring for the weeks between Whitsunday and Michaelmas. 
In reference to the Gospels for the week-days, Matthew is their 
source during the first eleven of these seventeen weeks. Now 
the Gospel of Mark does not, as we shall see, rise to the dignity 
of having a section for itself in which it furnishes the lessons 
both for the Saturdays and Sundays and for the week-days. For 
that reason it is after the eleventh week here put into the 
Matthew section to give the lessons for Monday, Tuesday, 
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. At Michaelmas, then, — let us 
say at the beginning or at the middle of September, seeing that 
it sometimes, in some places, depends upon the Sunday after 
September fourteenth, a comparatively fixed point as I above 
called it, — the Gospel according to Luke begins, and is the source 
of the Saturday and Sunday lessons until Lent. As with 
Matthew so with Luke, Luke offers the week-day lessons also 
until the close of the twelfth week — in Matthew it was the 
eleventh — and then these are drawn from Mark. In Lent the 
Saturdays and Sundays are dedicated to Mark, but the five week- 
days are filled by the Old Testament. It strikes one strangely to 
think that in this great Church the Old Testament is placed in 
such a comparatively inferior position. Indeed, manuscripts of 
the Old Testament are rare things, and there are not even many 
manuscripts of the lesson-books of the Old Testament. As 



390 THE TEXT 

might be expected, the lessons for the passion-week are 
particularly numerous and long. On Good Friday there are 
twelve Gospels of the passion and four Gospels of the four hours. 
There is also a group of eleven morning resurrection lessons. 

The monthly register, the fixed part of the Gospel, is very 
differently treated in different manuscripts, varying perhaps with 
the money or with the time which those who ordered or he who 
wrote the book had at command. Some volumes have the few 
strictly necessary great days, and then very few saints and almost 
none of less known name. Others have a saint for at least every 
day in the year, save the great feasts. Certain lessons are often 
repeated for similar memories. For example, the passage 
Matthew n 2 "- 30 is used for the memory of a saint in general 
among the "various" Gospels at the end of the list, and is 
applied to various special or single saints in the list itself. 

The "Apostle," the book containing the lesson from Acts 
and the Epistles, is far more rare than the " Gospel." It is also 
arranged in two parts, but in one respect it is more simple than 
the Gospel, because the lessons after Whitsuntide flow on in a 
single series of weeks up to Lent. The book of Acts is read on 
Saturdays and Sundays and week-days between Easter and 
Whitsuntide, and it is of interest that we know that that was the 
custom at the time of Chrysostom, who died in 407. It is clear 
from that circumstance that the lessons are not of a very late 
date. 

In a large number, probably in the majority of the books of 
lessons, there are red musical signs above or below the words to 
direct the one who has to read, intone, or sing them before the 
assembled Christians. 

Since the sixteenth century a number of editions ot 
" Gospels " and " Apostles " have been printed, largely in 
Venice. The oldest Gospel that I know of is the one printed 
in Venice in 1539. I have never heard of a copy of it in the 
West, save a single one, and I have not been able to find many 
copies of it in the East. The fact appears to have been over- 
looked that in the earlier editions of these books large portions 
of the Greek text of the New Testament were published in print 
drawn directly from manuscripts, and without connection with 
the Western editions of the New Testament. 

The manuscripts of these lesson-books have their own Arabic 



LESSON-BOOKS 39 1 

numerals. Number 13, of the twelfth century, in the National 
Library at Paris, reminds the reader of a various reading some- 
times found in the title of the twelve Gospels of the passion. 
There I have just written "passion." We say "passion" in the 
West. In the East, in the Greek Church, they say " passions," 
or, if you please, " sufferings " : to, cvayyeAta twv TraOwv. That is 
the Greek rule : The Gospels of the passions. But there are a 
few manuscripts that have : The Gospels of the passion : to. 
cvayycXta rov iradovs. I think that they must be attributed to 
the West, to the influence of the Latin Church. — The manuscript 
46 is of the costly kind, on purple parchment in golden uncial 
writing. It is of the ninth or tenth century, and is in the 
Imperial Library at Vienna. Like many a distinguished book, it 
brings more show than contents, for it only offers us nineteen 
select lessons. — Number 117 of the twelfth century in the 
Laurentiana at Florence is also in golden writing, and contains 
about twenty-two lessons. — In number 280, which lies in the 
Greek Church of St. George at Venice, and is of the fourteenth 
century, we find two characteristic subscriptions, showing us how 
these manuscripts were used for special requests for prayer on the 
part of those who wrote or who possessed or who made presents 
of them: "The present holy Gospel was completed by me the 
worthless priest and first judge (advocate) of the holy metropolis 
of Lacedaemonia, Nicholas Malotros, and ye priests who in the 
future open it pray for me the wretched one in your sacred 
functions, that the Lord may also forgive you your transgressions 
in the terrible day of His repaying." Doubtless in some such 
cases the writing of the book was the self-imposed task in 
expiation of a sin, and the prayer desired was aimed to cover that 
sin. Nevertheless the expressions worthless and wretched here 
used are so frequently found in such subscriptions that one is 
inclined to attribute them to a show of modesty. A later hand 
wrote the following : " Every one who reads this holy Gospel 
should pray for and remember in the sacred functions Nicholas 
the son of Eustathius, who bought it and gave it to me the 
Spiritual Isaiah, in order that I remember him so long as I 
remain among the living, and that after my departure hence I 
leave it to whatsoever monastery I please. I received it in the 
year from Christ 1462, the eleventh indiction." In general the 
dates in the manuscripts arc in the year of the world. Only a 



392 THE TEXT 

few late manuscripts write the year of our Lord as this scribe 
Isaiah does. — Number 292 is of the tenth century, and is in the 
city library at Carpentras in southern France. It is written in 
uncial letters. In the year 1091 Epiphanius Magister Paschales 
presented it to the monastery of the bearer of God of Alypos. 
There are several historical notes on the margins, telling of the 
pest on Cyprus in 1438 and in 1575. — In the manuscript 396 
Hilarion, who wrote it in Bercea, tells how they had been driven 
fiom Mount Athos by the Turks, and had halted in Bercea. 
Having no "Gospel" in the monastery, and there being no 
skilled writer, re^vm??, he had copied this Gospel : " And ye that 
read, if ye find mistakes, forgive and pray to the Lord for me 
Hilarion, monk and priest, written in the year 6836, tenth 
indiction." That is, 1328. — In number 835 of the Greek 
gymnasium at Saloniki, or Thessalonica, the writer makes a new 
word to name in one breath the people whom he wished to have 
pray for him : " Ye who read this holy volume priestpastor- 
deacons, 7rp€<r/?vrepo7ra7ra8o(W/<oyoi, pray for me to the Lord." 
He wrote in the year 1072. 

Herewith we leave the Greek manuscripts of the text of the 
New Testament. No other Greek book has anything like the 
amount of testimony to its text that the books of the New 
Testament have. The only difficulty is that there are not 
workers and there is not money enough at command to secure 
the collation of these hundreds of manuscripts in all parts of 
Europe and of the East. The greater part of them have only 
been touched in select passages. Now that is far better than 
nothing, and we may be very thankful for what has been done 
in that respect. Yet that is not the clear-cut, whole work. For 
the text of the New Testament, the right thing, the whole thing, 
the very best thing that can be done is just good enough. There 
should be a carefully drawn up plan and a systematic inspection of 
the whole field, and then the work should be divided up among 
collators and finished piece by piece, library after library, and 
sent in copy to four or five of the great libraries of the world, 
so as to be at the service of every Christian scholar who is 
prepared to work upon the subject. Christianity could well 
spare the men and the money for this purpose. Every manu- 
script should also be photographed, and its ornaments and large 
section letters should be copied, so that even externally the 



LESSON-BOOKS 393 

comparison of the way in which the books have been prepared 
and written may lend its aid to the grouping of kindred manu- 
scripts and to the determination of the time and place of origin 
of the manuscripts. Such a systematic endeavour to work over 
this field should receive not merely the interested attention but 
also the most active help of all classical philologians who busy 
themselves with Greek texts. For every advance, every new 
determination in reference to the Greek manuscripts of the New 
Testament, is of peculiar moment for Greek palaeography. No 
classical books, and not the whole of the Greek classics combined, 
offer such an opportunity as the manuscripts of the New Testa- 
ment offer, for the decision of palseographical problems from the 
fourth century down to the sixteenth. 



394 



VI. 

TRANSLATIONS. 

Beyond all question the original Greek text of the New Testa- 
ment has the chief interest for us, and must remain our final 
aim. It is perfectly true that Jesus and His disciples without 
doubt commonly spoke Aramaic, an Aramaic that had come 
down from the North, though I consider it as possible that He 
and they also understood and spoke more or less Greek, seeing 
that the tiny province in which the Jews prevailed was so closely 
surrounded by and permeated by Greeks. The words of Jesus, 
therefore, which the Gospels have preserved for us are, aside 
from a few cases, words that have been translated from the 
Aramaic into Greek. Now it might at first sight seem proper and 
desirable that we should in textual criticism be especially glad if 
by any chance we came upon and could insert at the given place 
in the Gospels any Aramaic words that Jesus spoke instead of 
the Greek words which now stand there. Not in the least. We 
should rejoice with all our hearts to be able to determine 
certainly any of those Aramaic words and sentences. But they 
would have nothing directly to do with textual criticism. The 
textual critic must necessarily limit his work to the reconstruction 
of, the purifying of, the accurate determination of the original 
Greek text of these New Testament books. 

In pursuing this aim the critic appeals first to the manuscripts 
which in one way or another offer him in its entirety or in large 
parts and sections that Greek text, and we have already spoken of 
these manuscripts. As, however, these Greek Gospels with their 
translations give us the Aramaic words of Jesus, so is it also 
possible that translations of these Greek Gospels be of very great 
assistance to us in determining the original Greek text. These 
translations have in one way an extraordinary interest for the con- 
nection between the New Testament and Christianity, because 
thousands of Christians in the Churches of the respective countries 
for centuries have drawn and many still draw much of what they 



TRANSLATIONS 395 

know about Jesus and His work and His worth from these 
translations. Hut their advantage for us lies in another, in the 
inverse direction. We wish to know their source. We wish to 
determine the form from which they were taken, the model after 
which they were drawn, the seal which made this impression. 
Then we turn back to the early Church and pass beyond the 
wide circles which the Greek Church embraces, and ask among 
other languages and peoples for those who used the books of the 
New Testament in other than the Greek tongue. Everywhere it 
must then be our effort to ascend the stream of each such 
tradition to its head, to the point at which it has branched off 
from the Greek mother tradition in our Gospels. 

Of course, we cannot expect to be able to reach in any 
language the precise point at which the very first translation of 
any part of the New Testament was made. It would be scarcely 
possible to imagine that positively nothing of the volume had 
been transferred to a given language before a definite day upon 
which some one set himself the aim to translate it, and then in a 
single effort rendered every part of it from Matthew to Revelation 
into his native tongue. We should indeed have to ask ourselves, 
whether no one translated some one book or more than one 
book into another language even before the collection was 
gathered together into one whole. And we must in the nature 
of the case presuppose that many fragments or various single 
books were here and there translated before the whole was 
systematically taken in hand. 

Our inward inclination would lead us to lay at first and 
continually the greatest stress upon the translations made in the 
East. We feel instinctively that they must be of most service to 
us, because they lie so near to the origin of Christianity. This 
feeling is natural. Yet two considerations join to combat the 
preeminence of these Eastern translations, to decrease their 
practical value for us. On the one hand, the Eastern languages 
are to such a degree in their nature foreign to the Greek language 
that it was not easy, indeed in some cases that it was not in the 
least possible, to render the expressions of the New Testament 
writers in an adequate manner in the desired tongue. That is 
one side. And on the other hand, we of the West are so very 
seldom well, thoroughly, livingly acquainted with those Eastern 
tongues, that we find it difficult to attain to an even tolerably 



39^ THE TEXT 

correct judgment as to the original text from which the Eastern 
phrases have been drawn. The former of the two difficulties 
had a curious effect upon the translations, in that the given 
foreigner at times adopted Greek words into his own language. 
Sometimes such words were prepositions or conjunctions, but in 
other cases they were substantives. If in the Syriac translation 
one meets with a long word, the proper thing to do with it is to 
spell it in Greek letters, in which case it usually proves to be an 
old friend. We do not need to say that that was bad translat- 
ing on the part of the given translator, yet it presents a most 
excellent result for textual purposes. It may at once be 
emphasised that in general we may declare that the worse a 
translation is, as a translation, the more the translator fails to 
deprive the original of its form and local colouring and to mould 
it into the distinctive idioms of his own language, the more easily 
we can recognise under his rough work the Greek text which he 
had before his eyes. We must, however, take each translation 
as it comes. The work that was done centuries ago must be 
brought to bear upon our task as well as the circumstances 
admit. 

The value of the translations attaches especially at first to the 
localising of texts or of readings, or we may say to the perceiving 
of the extent to which readings were spread abroad. For it is 
clear that a reading, whencesoever it may have come, if it be in 
the Syrian translation, must have been in Syria ; if it be in the 
Coptic translation, must have been in Egypt. Furthermore, in 
so far as we may succeed in dating a translation approximately, 
its text offers us a clue to the age of a given form or of given 
readings. 

Syriac Translations. 

Let us take our stand in Syria. Palestine is almost a Syrian 
province. It is a continuation of the same mountains and valleys 
and desert and sea-coast as those that are in Syria. The early 
Christians who gathered together at Antioch formed, so far as 
we know, the first important assembly of Christians outside of 
Palestine. Antioch was the capital of Syria, but as well the 
second capital of the Roman Empire. It was a Greek city, yet 
it is impossible that it should not have had a large proportion of 



TRANSLATIONS— SYRIAC 397 

Syrians within its walls. At no very great distance were other 
large towns. We have already alluded to the fact that Paul's 
campaign directed against the Christians in or around Damascus 
assures us that at that extremely early date, probably in the year 
30 of our era, there must have been an appreciable, technically 
an attackable, number of Christians there. And everything, the 
letters of the chief priests and the elders in Jerusalem to their 
Jewish brethren in Damascus, points to Aramean not to Greek 
Christians. Paul would not have dreamt of dragging Greeks 
bound from Damascus to Jerusalem to have them punished. It 
must have been genuine Jews whom he had in view. The result 
of Paul's journey to Damascus, his conversion, his stay there to 
be instructed in Christianity, and his two years there or in that 
neighbourhood, must have been a large increase in the number 
of Christians. 

Considering the frequent communication between Damascus 
and Antioch on the one hand, and Aleppo, Edessa, and Nisibis 
and Peter's Babylon on the other hand, it would be easy to 
believe that even during the years before the death of Paul 
many Christians were to be found in that neighbourhood ; it 
would be hard to believe that there were none there. Given 
a number of Christians, it is not possible to determine at what 
precise moment of time they felt it necessary for them to have a 
translation of the New Testament writings. Let us leave that 
time for a moment. 

Ephraim the Syrian, who was mentioned on occasion of the 
manuscript at Paris, C, named after him, was born at Nisibis 
about the year 306, born a heathen, became a pupil of the 
bishop of Nisibis, lived in or near Edessa, and died there in 
378. He is a witness to the fact that in his day the Syriac 
translation had long been in existence. The point is for the 
moment, before other possibilities arise, to make an equation of 
some kind, to calculate how long the Christians of those lands 
could have waited after the year 30 or the year 60 before they 
demanded or prepared a translation of the New Testament ; and 
conversely, how long before Ephraim's day we should think that 
the translation had been in use. It does not seem to me likely 
that the Christians in Syria will have waited for a New Testament 
of their own until the year 150. Having, however, until now no 
proofs one way or another, I am for the moment inclined to name 



393 THE TEXT 

that year 150 as a date at which the Syrians probably were able 
to read and hear in their own tongue such New Testament books 
as they received. In all this exact dating, be it remembered, we 
are going by necessity upon theory. Testimony is at present not 
to be found for it. We have in actual parchment and ink a 
multitude of Syrian manuscripts, and we must look at them and 
see what they are like, what classes they show among themselves 
that seem to determine something about their history. 

A little before the middle of the nineteenth century, in the 
year 1842, William Cureton, in the British Museum, found among 
some manuscripts from the Nitrian desert in Egypt fragments of 
an old copy of the Syriac Gospels probably written about the 
year, let us say, 460. And fifty years later, in the year 1892, 
Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis and her twin sister Mrs. Margaret 
Dunlop Gibson, discovered in the monastery of St. Catherine on 
Mount Sinai a palimpsest manuscript which lacked only about 
eight pages of the four Gospels. This manuscript is of the 
fourth or fifth century. The work of these two learned ladies 
upon this and the other manuscripts, especially Syriac and 
Arabic, of the Sinaitic monastery forms a peculiar and a brilliant 
chapter in the scientific achievements in library work during the 
last decades. Their photographing the whole palimpsest, their 
researches upon it again at Sinai with a corps of scholars, their 
edition of it, their repeated examination of it — I saw them at 
work at Mount Sinai on their sixth visit in February and March 
1906 — and an edition that they now are preparing, claim for them 
the warmest thanks of all biblical and Semitic scholars, and have 
received the highest recognition in learned circles, not only in 
Great Britain but also in Germany and America. 

The age of these two manuscripts is of itself a warrant for 
the importance of their testimony. The text which they gave 
us is undoubtedly of a much higher age than the manuscripts 
themselves, and appears to be of the Re- Wrought Text, the wide- 
spread text of the second century. It would, of course, be 
possible that this text should have been translated during the 
third century. For myself, if anyone asserts that, I can scarcely 
prove him wrong. That does not, however, agree with my view 
of the whole situation, of the probabilities of the case. I assume 
that this text is essentially the earliest Syriac text, always pro- 
vided that no one proves, what I myself could without difficulty 



TRANSLATIONS— SYRIAC 399 

agree to, that parts of the New Testament were translated at 
Edessa even during the first century or early in the second 
century, before the reshaping of the text had taken the cast 
which it put on by the middle of the second century. 

A certain complication of the question, one which may 
some day help to a better decision as to it, is found in the 
existence of a Gospel harmony made by Tatian. Some declare 
that Tatian made his harmony at first in Greek, others that 
the Syrian text was the original. I have little doubt that the 
harmony was originally Greek. Tatian was a Syrian — the name 
Assyrian was also used — by place of birth, but he was a Greek 
nevertheless, and was brought up as a Greek. It seems to me 
to be especially worthy of note that the Arabic translation 
particularly emphasises in the heading the fact that the harmony 
was the work of Tatian " the Greek." Had he written the 
harmony in Syrian it can scarcely be doubted that he would 
there have been called, as he has else often been called, Tatian 
the Syrian and not Tatian the Greek. So much for that point. 
It must nevertheless be conceded that, even if Tatian's harmony 
had been originally composed in Greek, it would have been alto- 
gether a possible thing that it should, either by him or by his 
immediate neighbours, at an early date have been translated into 
Syrian. He may have prepared the original harmony at once 
after his separation from the Church in the year 172, or he may 
have made it several, even ten, years earlier. We do not yet 
know about it. 

It is declared that the Syrian harmony of Tatian was the 
first, and for a long while, possibly until the year 250, the only 
written representative of the four Gospels in the Syriac language. 
I have thus far not been able to see that this statement has 
been proved. The harmony was very convenient. It was a 
cheap and handy compendium of the Gospel. I see no diffi- 
culty in supposing that, even if a Syriac translation of the four 
Gospels in their entirety had been made ten or fifty years be- 
fore Tatian's book appeared, this book should in wide circles 
have usurped the place which the four Gospels would otherwise 
have occupied. Were this the case the number of manuscripts of 
the four Gospels would remain limited, and it would certainly 
often happen that even scholars would refer to the handy book. 
We should never forget the practical side, and should never for- 



400 THE TEXT 

get that the view of Scripture at that day was several removes 
from the view held by the strict inspirationists of the nineteenth 
century, who are now apparently dying out in educated circles. 
The practical side tells us that those people largely not blessed 
with very great fortunes, and not given to much reading, seeing 
that many of them could not read at all, were far more likely on 
that account to choose a small book when they could buy one 
instead of a large one. It is further to be remembered that this 
small book was supposed to contain all that was in the larger 
book, that only useless or unnecessary repetition was avoided in 
it. Lastly, the thing at which the Christians then and there 
aimed was not an amulet but the Gospel. They wished for the 
sense, the message, the proclamation of good-will to men, and 
they thought that they had this — and I think too that they had 
this — in the Diatessaron. 

If Tatian wrote his harmony at first in Syrian, and if it 
appeared before the Syrian translation of the separate four 
Gospels appeared, then it would be a matter of inevitable 
necessity that its form should have an important influence 
upon the form of the four Gospels when they came to be 
rendered into Syrian, and this would, I concede, account for 
similarity of readings here and there. Inasmuch, however, as it 
seems to me in every way more reasonable to suppose that the 
Syrian translation of the separate four Gospels was in vogue long 
before, or at least ten years before, Tatian's harmony saw the light 
in a Syrian form, I insist upon it that in this case that Syrian 
form of the four Gospels will by just as inevitable a necessity 
have had a great influence upon the shaping of the Syrian words 
and sentences in Tatian's Diatessaron or harmony of the four. 

Going back to our manuscripts, I take it for granted that the 
Syrian text represented in the Curetonian and in the Lewis- 
Gibson manuscripts is the text of the Syrian Gospels as it was 
in existence in the year 150, little as I should wish to be so 
obstinate as to say that it had not in the later years experienced 
one modification or another. This is what I call the Old-Syrian 
text. It could have been called then Peshitta, but I do- not 
know that that word was used for the text of the New Testament 
at so early a date. The statement just made as to the Old- 
Syrian text is sometimes so conceived of as if it necessarily were 
antagonistic to the high age of the so-called Peshitta Syriac 



TRANSLATIONS— SYRIAC 401 

translation. The previous sentence gives, I think, a clue to my 
thoughts upon that point. I take it that the relation between 
that Old-Syrian text and the Peshitta is one conditioned by age 
and experience. I suppose the Old-Syrian to have with time, by 
means of the work of Syrian scholars in the third and in the 
fourth century, glided into the form which the centuries that 
followed used, and which is now found in the editions of the 
Peshitta. 

The word Peshitta, which used to be written Peshito, means 
11 simple," and as applied to a text, especially of a translation 
it would appear, seems to amount to as much as "usual," 
"current," "common," and may be compared with the word 
Vulgate in the Latin Church. The Syrians named their trans- 
lation of the Old Testament which had been made from the 
Hebrew " the Peshitta," as distinguished from a later translation 
made from the Greek text of the Septuagint. Probably the name 
passed over to the New Testament through the association of 
the New Testament with that Peshitta Old Testament translation. 
We shall have occasion to refer to the text of the Peshitta later 
in connection with the Greek text, and can here leave it. The 
first edition of the Peshitta was published at the wish of the 
Jacobite patriarch of Antioch named Ignatius. He sent Moses 
Marden, a priest from Mesopotamia, to Europe to find someone 
who would help the poor Church make an edition. Moses tried 
in vain in Rome and in Venice to find a Maecenas. He found 
at last in Vienna, however, a statesman, the imperial chancellor, 
Johannes Albert Widmanstadt, who actually understood Syriac. 
The two printed then the edition which was issued in 1555 in 
four parts, the Gospel, the Epistles of Paul, the Acts, the Catholic 
Epistles. The Catholic Epistles were but three in number : 
James, First Peter, First John. That edition was an interesting 
one. No Second Peter, no Second and Third John, no Jude, 
no Revelation. Further, it did not contain Luke 22 17 - 18 or John 
8 1 " 11 the Adulteress, or 1 John 5 7 . George Henry Gwilliam pub- 
lished the Gospels of the Peshitta at Oxford in 1901. 

The Peshitta is, however, not the only form of the Syrian 
text. Another form is called the Jerusalem or Palestinian form. 
We have not very many representatives of this text. It is 
rougher, less scientific than the Peshitta. The local colouring 
is much like that of the dialect of the Jerusalem Talmud. 
26 



402 THE TEXT 

Probably it is more nearly conjoined to the Old Syrian than to 
the later polished form of the Peshitta. The best theory at 
present is that it was made for the Melkitic Church in Palestine, 
perhaps in the fourth century, that being the Church of the 
Syrian tongue which holds to the patriarch of Constantinople. 

Another form of the Syrian text is in reality a double form, 
or consists of two forms. The reason why we do not entirely 
separate them from each other is that we cannot, that, in spite 
of the labours of Isaac H. Hall and of John Gwynn, we have 
not yet come to understand the exact distinction between them 
throughout the New Testament. The earlier part of these texts, 
the form that was first evolved, might be named after Philoxenus 
or Xenaia, who was from 488 to 518 the monophysitic bishop 
of Mabbogh or Hierapolis, and who seems to have first thought 
of the plan, or after Polycarp who prepared this translation, in 
the year 508. Polycarp's name might easily, however, be con- 
fused with that of the great Polycarp of Smyrna, who, though he 
was a friend of Ignatius of Antioch, may not have known Syrian. 
It is in the nature of the case impossible for Polycarp to have 
translated the Greek text anew without any reference to the 
current translation upon which he had been brought up. He 
could not for the purpose of making a new text go to China and 
cleanse besides his brains and his tongue from all traces of the 
existing one. But we cannot yet say so very much about this text. 
For it was revised, and thus far, as first said, we cannot dis- 
tinguish clearly between the one and the other of the two forms. 

This other form of the twin texts arose a century later, in 
the year 616, in the "Nine Mile" monastery, that far from 
Alexandria. This monastery, in the village Enaton, was a 
monastery of St. Anthony. Thomas of Heraclea, in Syria, that 
was his birthplace, had been bishop of Hierapolis, but had been 
compelled to fly from his diocese and take refuge in that 
monastery, and he took up the task of revising Polycarp's text. 
For this purpose he used two or three manuscripts of the 
Gospels, one of Acts and of the seven Catholic Epistles — this 
text contains seven, and not merely three Catholic Epistles — 
and two of the Epistles of Paul. We see the result of his work- 
in part with absolute certainty, because the readings are standing 
on the margin of the text. We perceive at once that he had 
good manuscripts, manuscripts that agreed largely with the Re- 



TRANSLATIONS— SYRIAC, COPTIC 403 

Wrought Text of the second century as represented in the Greek 
large letter manuscripts marked D. That we know about. But 
what else he may have done is not yet perfectly evident. He 
may have let the text stand without a single change, just as 
Polycarp had determined it. Or he may have changed it, made 
it according to his opinion better, in various ways. This trans- 
lation is an excellent one for the textual critic, in the sense 
explained a little way back. It does not pay the least attention 
to the Syrian habits of thought or speech. It settles upon the 
words to be used, fixes the order of the words, builds the 
sentences as far as it is possible after the Greek text. It is, 
humanly speaking, more likely that Thomas should have put 
many a reading that pleased him into the text. Syrian scholars 
will doubtless some day unravel the tangled threads ot these two 
forms of the text and assign to each of the two, to Polycarp and 
to Thomas, what belongs to each. John Gwynn published in 
1897 the Revelation in the Philoxenian or Polycarp form. He 
is the master in this field. May he live to give the Church an 
edition of the twin-text for the whole New Testament. 

It is not possible, nor is it necessary, for us to treat of the 
Syrian manuscripts in general. But we must glance for an 
instant at the books of lessons. We have seen that in the Greek 
Church the movable part of the year began with Easter and the 
fixed part with September. The Syrian books begin both parts 
with the fixed date of Epiphany, and close with the Sunday for 
the Dead. It will be remembered that the sixth of January was 
the old date for Christmas. Many of the books contain only 
the lessons for Sunday, with perhaps the week-day lessons for 
Lent and Easter week. Some books contain only feast-days, 
and begin with the angel and Zacharias, or with the angel and 
Mary, or with the birth of John the Baptist, or of Jesus. More- 
over, the Syrian books of lessons combine more frequently than 
the Greek books do Old Testament lessons with those from the 
second part of the New Testament, from the Apostle. 



Coptic Translations. 

In turning to the Egyptian or Coptic translations we again 
have to consider the question of date. St. Anthony heard the 



404 THE TEXT 

Gospels read in Church in Coptic when he was a boy. That 
assures us that there was a Coptic translation in use about the 
middle of the third century. Now, it must be kept in mind 
that Egypt was a land of science and of education and of 
progress, in spite of the pyramids in their stolid calm. In conse- 
quence, seeing that as with the Syrian translation we are without 
direct testimony, I presuppose that the two main Coptic transla- 
tions were made before the close of the second century. We 
may name three forms of the Coptic translation or three trans- 
lations, of which, however, the third is a somewhat uncertain 
quantity. The dialect of Lower Egypt is represented by a trans- 
lation which has been called Alexandrian and Memphitic, but is 
now termed Boheiric. The dialect of Upper Egypt gives us 
the Thebaic or Saidic translation. These two appear to have 
been made directly from the Greek. The third translation, the 
Fayyumic, probably, or possibly, flowed from the Saidic towards 
the end of the third century. The two great translations have 
been favoured by fortune, at least from the point of view of 
textual criticism, so little from other points of view as their 
experiences could be called desirable. It was a pity that the 
great Church split, and that Jacobites and Melkites were separated 
from each other. But this separation of the Coptic Church from 
Constantinople and the Imperialists prevented the translations 
from being spoiled by the textual movements and changes in 
Syria and Asia Minor. Then the Arabs came a century and a 
half later, and began to thrust the Coptic language aside and to 
put Arabic in its place, and that tended to keep the old texts 
pure. And finally, a good and an honourable thing too, the 
scribes and scholars of the twelfth and the succeeding centuries 
did all they could to keep the text free from false additions and 
false changes. 

The Boheiric form, to use the Arabic name for the dialect 
of Lower Egypt, was so wielded by the translator as to represent 
the Greek text very fairly, different as the languages are. In 
Boheiric it is not possible to distinguish between a sentence with 
a participle and one with a finite verb. Nor is there a passive 
voice. Greek passives are sometimes rendered by a third person 
plural of the active used impersonally, sometimes by the third 
personal singular if a singular subject can be brought into play, 
and sometimes by the qualitative form of the verb. The whole 



TRANSLATIONS— COPTIC, ETHIOPIC 405 

New Testament was translated into Boheiric, but the Revelation 
is placed at one side by itself and is not copied with the other 
books. This treatment of Revelation agrees well with what we 
have observed in the Greek Church, and with memories of the 
criticism of Dionysius of Alexandria upon this book, which we 
referred to in treating above of the canon. The books are 
arranged in the order : Gospels, Pauline and Catholic Epistles, 
Acts. George Horner, of Frome and Oxford, has with un- 
wearying diligence, through years of work, copying and collating 
from London to Cairo and from Rome to St. Petersburg, placed 
before the Church a complete edition of this version in four 
volumes with an abundant critical apparatus. 

The Saidic form in Upper Egypt came later to the hands of 
Western scholars, and was for an indefinite time very limited in 
extent of testimony. The translation is of a rougher description 
than that of the Boheiric dialect. Although the Saidic translator 
uses Greek words if possible still more freely than the Boheiric 
translator, he is less true to the form of the Greek sentence, and 
he often leaves out conjunctions. George Horner is preparing 
an edition of this version. 

The Fayyumic translation rejoices in several names, unless 
we please to say that some of the names are the names of 
relatives and not of this translation itself. It will be enough, 
under the present ignorance of all concerned as to the qualities 
of this or of these forms, to say that the names Bashmuric, 
Amnionic, Elearchic, Oasitic, Akhmimic, Subsaidic, and Middle 
Egyptian are all at the command of a scholar who is ready to 
examine these fragments. If the names continue to multiply I 
fear we shall soon have as many as there are words in the trans- 
lation, the fragments are so few and brief. 

The lesson-books in the Coptic Church begin with the month 
Thoth, or on the twenty-eighth of August. 



Ethiopic Translation. 

Pursuing our way towards the south, we approach the 
Axumitic Church in Abyssinia, with its Ethiopic translation. 
Here the question of date is extraordinarily difficult. Two 
Ethiopic scholars who expressed themselves fully upon the 



406 THE TEXT 

question varied between the fourth and the seventh century, so 
that we do not yet know how to define a certain period. I 
accept Dillmann's view that the translation was made from the 
Greek text between the fourth and the sixth century. The trans- 
lator does not appear to have been well acquainted with Greek, 
and therefore to have made many mistakes. A revision, which 
Dillmann placed in the fourteenth or a later century, corrected 
the mistakes with the help of Coptic and Arabic translations. At 
that date, in the fourteenth century, the Ethiopic language was 
replaced in daily intercourse by the Amharic language. The first 
edition of the Ethiopic New Testament was made in Rome in 
two volumes in the years 1548 and 1549. A monk, Tesfa Zion, 
of the order Takla-Haimanot, who was by birth an Ethiopian 
from Malhez, came to Rome from the monastery Dabra-Libanos 
on Mount Lebanon, with two other monks from that monastery 
named Tank'a Wald and Za-selase. They brought with them 
Ethiopic manuscripts of the New Testament. Three men whom 
they met in Italy, one of whom was an archdeacon from Con- 
stantinople, helped the Ethiopian monks prepare and print that 
edition. ' Thus far we have no scientific edition of the Ethiopic 
New Testament. 

Armenian Translation. 

The Armenians used at first the Syrian Bible. Mesrob and 
the Armenian patriarch Isaac began in the fifth century to 
prepare an Armenian Bible from the Syriac. In the year 431, 
however, two of Mesrob's pupils named John " Ekelensis " and 
Joseph " Palnensis " were at the Council of Ephesus and brought 
Greek manuscripts home with them. Mesrob and Isaak 
recognised at once the greater value of the Greek text, and threw 
aside the translations that they had already made from the 
Syriac. John and Joseph were sent to Alexandria to learn 
Greek thoroughly, and then they translated the whole New 
Testament from the Greek. Nothing was more natural than 
that their long use of the Syrian New Testament should have so 
strongly impressed its forms upon their minds as to cause them 
here and there to use Syrian readings. The Armenian synod 
of the year 1662 sent a clergyman named Oskan from the city 
Erivan near Ararat to the West to try to have the Armenian 



TRANSLATIONS— ARMENIAN, LATIN 407 

Bible printed. Oskan stayed a long while in Rome, but could 
do nothing there. At last, in the year 1666, he published in 
Amsterdam the first edition of the Armenian Bible. 

We know almost nothing about the Georgian or Grusinian 
translation. It was printed in 1723 in Moscow. 

Persian translations of a late date, two of the fourteenth and 
one of the eighteenth century, one from the Greek, one from the 
Syriac, and one from the Latin, do not at all satisfy our wishes. 
It seems as if the Christians in Persia must have long before the 
fourteenth century freed themselves from the necessity of using 
the Syrian translation. 

There are a number of Arabic translations, the earliest dating 
apparently from a time soon after Mohammed. Therewith we 
may turn from the Eastern to the Western translations. 



Latin Translations. 

We have passed by the companies and groups of the various 
Eastern translations. There really were among them different 
translations of such an age and of such a literary character and at 
least partially to such an extent accessible that we could make 
some use of them. In the West and North we have three that we 
can name. Two of these, however, are not yet of great moment 
for us. The Slavic translation is still too little known in the 
West to be thoroughly weighed and proved. And the Gothic 
translation is only a matter of fragments. The one remaining 
translation is the Latin. But that is one of eminent importance : 
One child of the West, but a lion. 

The proper way to attack the Latin form of the Bible would, 
I think, be to divide its history and growth into three parts, and 
treat of Old-Latin, Middle-Latin, and New-Latin. But the 
Latin manuscripts are not my province. That belongs to 
John Wordsworth, the bishop of Salisbury. So we shall only 
have two parts : Old-Latin and Vulgate, keeping in mind that 
the name Vulgate for our purposes is a comparatively modern 
affair. The Old-Latin used to be called the Itala, but that name 
was wrong and has been shelved. It, the term Old-Latin, 
belongs in general to such examples of the Latin translation as 
were written, translated, before the time of Jerome, we micht 



408 THE TEXT 

say roughly before the year 400, seeing that he died in 420. 
The rise or origin of the Latin translation gives occasion to many 
a disputable question, offers many a problem that we at least 
to-day cannot solve. The statement has been made that there 
were at the first a number of separate translations made. With 
like certainty we have been assured that every phenomenon in 
the history of this text is to be led back to one single original 
translation. We have already spoken of the probable sporadic, 
tentative, partial translation, a thing that in every case is quite 
likely to have taken place. Perhaps such previous work was 
more likely in Latin circles than in Syrian or Coptic circles. 
The two languages, Greek and Latin, were cognate, and they 
were coexistent in many provinces of the Roman Empire. The 
translation would in this case be so much easier than in the 
case of the Eastern translations, that it is likely to have lured 
many a priest or deacon or reader to put pen to paper and to 
place the Greek text into the known words, which were adapted 
to reading before the Church. But in spite of the existence of 
such preliminary work the possibility would remain that, when 
the time came, a single complete translation might have been 
issued at one place, or that two or three complete translations 
might have seen the light at about the same time in different 
provinces. 

We should bear in mind that the greater part of the literary 
phenomena in a case of this kind admit of reduction to 
the one or to the other of these origins. A single translation 
would admit of revising in different directions, in different 
provinces, and might appear in the end not to be related even 
distantly to its own former self. And a double or triple trans- 
lation might by the usage of the provinces be so assimilated and 
so differentiated as to give the appearance of being forms of a single 
original. In so far, moreover, as one translation should precede 
others, its influence, if it were known, could hardly fail to be 
yielded to by any succeeding translator. 

It is pertinent to ask, where a translation of the Greek text into 
Latin would be first to be expected. One thinks at the word Latin 
involuntarily of Rome. Rome was nevertheless in the second 
century still a Greek city in the main, and the Christians in it 
seem to have been chiefly Greeks until well into the third century, 
so that a translation was not likely to be called for there until after 



TRANSLATIONS— LATIN 409 

the beginning of the third century. The districts of Northern Italy 
may at an early period have been anxious to have a Latin Bible. 
But the place where the want of the Latin form was probably 
first felt, and felt most keenly, was Northern Africa. There 
Greek was not so well known. There were a great many 
Christians in the province, and few of them understood Greek. 
Sunday after Sunday the lessons had to be translated, interpreted 
by word of mouth. That was troublesome for the reader, and 
surely sometimes unsatisfactory to the hearers. It is then in 
Northern Africa that a Latin translation was probably first 
needed and first made. That may have been the only complete 
first translation. For it will certainly have soon been carried 
to Rome and to Northern Italy, and if translations did not yet 
exist there, the clergy of those provinces will doubtless have 
eagerly taken this North African text and corrected into it their 
own provincial expressions, at the same time changing anything 
else that did not agree with the texts which they were accustomed 
to use. 

The African translation lies before our eyes in manifold 
quotations by a number of African Church writers. It was not 
a peculiarly polished piece of work. It paid much more respect 
to the Greek words and to the Greek order of the words than 
was consistent with a good Latin style. For the textual critic 
that is a very welcome kind of work. We can tell much better 
what the original text before the eyes of the translator was. 

From one translation, then, or if anyone insist upon it, from 
two or three independent Latin translations, the manuscripts 
passed through the provinces to Gaul, to Great Britain, to 
Ireland. Every province has its own local names for all kinds 
of things. Every province has its own way of treating the 
language of Rome. And each province changes the new trans- 
lation to suit its own tongue and ears and needs, not forgetting 
to change readings which did not conform to the text they had 
used up to that time, to the manuscripts that they had in their 
hands. After the first receipt and adoption of the foreign work 
the Latin text in each province will usually have begun a life 
for itself, and will have passed through stages of development 
peculiar to itself. Undoubtedly the mental activity or dulness 
of the clergy in given provinces will have influenced the text in 
one direction or another, seeing that bright, quick thinking and 



4IO THE TEXT 

acting men will have more readily taken up their pens for 
necessary correction, or even for unnecessary and more wilful 
change, whereas sluggish and thoughtless men will have through 
carelessness allowed the manuscripts copied to deteriorate. As 
a result, provincial texts will have been produced : a Gallican, a 
British, an Italian text. All of these European texts should 
have a certain relationship to each other from the more active 
intercourse between the provinces. Perhaps it will be possible 
finally to determine, as Westcott and Hort said, three types of 
text, — an African, a European, and an Italian type. 



Old Latin Manuscripts. 

The first manuscript that we have of the Old-Latin Gospels 
is called a, for we use for these Old-Latin manuscripts the small 
letters. It appears to have been written in the fourth century, 
and it may have been written for or even by the hand of 
Eusebius, the bishop of Vercelli, who died as a martyr in the year 
371. It is in the cathedral of Vercelli, where it used to lie in the 
sacristy, and be shown about and kissed as a relic until it was 
torn almost to tatters. Now it is carefully guarded in an upper 
room under a glass case. — The letter e is the Codex Palatinus at 
Vienna. It is of the fifth century. Oddly enough, a leaf from 
it is in Trinity College at Dublin. — The manuscript k of the 
fifth or sixth century at Turin came from Bobbio, and is said to 
have belonged to the founder of Bobbio, Columban, who died 
in the year 615. — In the manuscript m t which is at Rome in the 
monastery of the Holy Cross, and is of the eighth or ninth 
century, Hort was inclined to think that he had discovered a 
Spanish form of the text. Its name is Speculum, and it has 
been, but incorrectly, attributed to Augustine. It contains 
Church lessons from all the books of the New Testament save 
Third John, Hebrews, and Philemon. The text in it is much 
like the text used by Priscillian. The fact that it does not 
contain the three heavenly witnesses 1 John 5 7 ' 8 is the more 
interesting in connection with its Spanish allures, for the newest 
researches attribute the insertion of those witnesses to Priscillian 
himself. — At Stockholm in Sweden, in the great library, there 
lies, I think, the largest known manuscript. It is of the thirteenth 



TRANSLATIONS — LATIN 41 1 

century, and contains among other things a Latin Bible. Among 
the manuscripts of the Old-Latin text for Acts and for Revelation 
it bears the letter g, and is apparently of the Italian type. Only 
in it do we find a complete Old-Latin Revelation. Formerly it 
was in Bohemia, and was carried from Prague to Sweden as war 
booty in the year 1 648 at the close of the Thirty Years' War. 

We observed above that, however the origin of the Latin 
form of the text of the New Testament may be conceived of, 
whether as proceeding from one original or from more, the 
resulting facts have been such as may be explained from either 
theory. The various provinces had texts which little by little 
became more and more corrupt, more and more different from 
the earliest text, and more and more different from each other. 
This was a plague for the learned members of the clergy, and 
Damasus, the bishop of Rome, appears to have asked Jerome 
the Dalmatian, in the year 382, to produce a new Latin Text. 
By the year 384 he had finished the Gospels, and handed them 
over to Damasus. This was his first revision, and he did it very 
well, taking care as far as possible to change no well-known 
phrases unless it proved to be positively necessary. He knew 
very well, and he wrote it in advance, that the people would 
not like the change. The opposition to his work was, however, 
so great that he was much more conservative in constituting the 
text of the rest of the Bible. Dean Burgon's opposition to the 
English revision of 1881 seemed to us serious, but it was mere 
child's play beside the antagonism shown in the fourth century. 
Augustine wrote to Jerome the story of a bishop who had used 
a reading of Jerome's in Jonah 4 6 . The people of the church 
raged about it, and insisted upon asking the Jews about it. The 
Jews said that the Hebrew text supported the reading familiar 
to the people. And thereupon the bishop was forced to restore 
that old and false reading in order not to become a shepherd 
without a flock, a bishop without people. It was centuries 
before the revision of Jerome was accepted by the Church. 
When Gregory the Great sat in the chair at Rome both the old 
and the new translation were there in use. Sometimes the ninth 
century has been named as the time at which Jerome's work 
came into general use. Yet the Anglo-Saxons, who copied many 
manuscripts, kept to the old text. And the manuscript of the 
Old-Latin text marked c, the Codex Colbertinus, was written 



412 THE TEXT 

in the eleventh century, and that Gigas, the gigantic manuscript 
at Stockholm with the Acts and Revelation in Old-Latin, was 
written in the thirteenth century. 

All the while the manuscripts were being corrected and 
altered hither and thither, and from the eighth century on 
every effort was made, now by Charlemagne with Alcuin, 
now by Theodulf the bishop of Orleans (787-821), now 
by Langfranc, archbishop of Canterbury (1 069-1089), now by 
Stephen 11. Harding, bishop of Citeaux (f n 34), and now by 
the Cardinal Nicholas (1150), to reduce the chaos of manu- 
scripts to order, but in vain. In the thirteenth century regular 
books of corrections were made by the faculty at Paris, by 
the Dominicans, and by the Franciscans, yet the text grew 
ever worse. Roger Bacon attacked the corrupted text in 
strong terms about the year 1266, and berated particularly the 
Dominicans for vacillation in correction : "As a result their 
correction is the worst corruption, and the destruction of the 
text of God." It is often supposed that the name Vulgate 
attached to Jerome's translation from the first. So far as I have 
been able to discover, the name was not definitely attached to 
it until the decree of the Council of Trent on the 8th of April 
1546, and was in that decree not at all used as a well-known 
name, not used as a name at all, but merely as an adjective 
in the sense of " common " or " current." The council, not 
having a suspicion of the real facts in the case, called it the 
"old and current edition." It might almost have been said 
that the other editions, could the corruptions so far as they 
were Old-Latin have been gathered together by themselves, were 
still older and still more current, and that this decree was meant 
to raise a dam to prevent their further progress. The name 
Vulgate, then, in our way of using it, is a modern invention. 
Pope Sixtus v. made an edition of the Latin text of the New 
Testament, published in the year 1590, and declared his edition 
to be the Vulgate to which the decree of the Council of Trent 
had pointed, and that it "must be received and held as true, 
legitimate, authentic, and undoubted, in all public and private 
disputations, lectures, sermons, and explanations." Unfortunately, 
it was at once discovered that Sixtus's edition was extraordinarily 
bad, and must be as far as that was possible suppressed and 
replaced by another. It was Bellarmin who suggested the "pious 



TRANSLATIONS — LATIN 413 

fraud" that they should recall the volumes and correct and 
re-issue them as if the deceased Sixtus had ordered it. It is 
a curious combination of laxity and severity when we perceive 
that, on the one hand, this fraud was carried out, and that, on 
the other hand, poor Bellarmin was refused canonisation as a 
saint because he had suggested the trick. The new edition 
appeared in the year 1592 under Clement vin., and is called 
the Clementine Vulgate. It was far better than the bad edition 
of Sixtus v., but was not so carefully revised as it should 
have been. It is singular that the great Roman Catholic Church, 
with its large number of talented and immensely learned scholars, 
with the vast libraries at its command, with means unlimited for 
any necessary work, should in the three centuries that have 
passed by since the issue of the Clementine edition not have 
made a good edition of the Latin text. We now have a good 
edition of the Gospels and of the Acts which we owe to thirty 
years of work on the part of John Wordsworth, the bishop of 
Salisbury, and his friends, especially William Sanday and Henry 
Julian White, and may heaven give him and them years and 
strength to bring it to a happy completion. 



Vulgate Manuscripts. 

The great manuscript of the Vulgate is the one named after 
Amiata, where it used to be. The sign for it is am, because 
the Vulgate manuscripts are often designated by a syllable to 
distinguish them from the Old-Latin manuscripts that only have 
a letter. But this fine volume, now the pride of the Laurentiana 
at Florence, is English work. It was written shortly before the 
year 716 at the order of Ceolfrid, the abbot of Yarrow, who 
intended to carry it as a gift to Rome. He died at Langres 
on the way on the 25th of September 716, and his 
companions probably took the volume to Rome. The text of 
this Codex Amiatinus is excellent, and contains, as is easily 
explicable, many Anglo-Saxon and Irish readings. — The La Cava 
manuscript, marked cav, was written by a scribe Danila in the 
ninth century, and is in the Trinity monastery of the learned 
Benedictines in La Cava, near Corpo di Cava, not far from Naples. 
Its text reminds us of the Speculum mentioned above, for it 



41 4 THE TEXT 

has, indeed, the Vulgate text, but in combination with Spanish 
readings. — The Royal Library at Munich contains a manuscript 
of the year 870, the Codex of St. Emmeram, as it is named, 
em, from the monastery to which the Emperor Arnulf gave 
it. It was written in gold by Berengar and Liuthard at the 
order of Charles the Bald. It is ornamented with beautiful 
pictures. 

In the library at Fulda, between Eisenach and Frankfurt-on- 
the-Main, is the Codex Fuldensis, fuld, which contains the whole 
New Testament, but has the four Gospels in a harmony that 
is often found in different languages. It has a good text. This 
book was written about the year 540, at the wish of Victor 
of Capua. — The manuscript gat has had a varied history, though 
now resting quietly in the National Library at Paris. It was 
written by an Irishman, and was once in St. Gatiens de Tours. 
The book-thief Libri stole it and sold it to Lord Ashburnham. 
Now it is once more in France. — In the British Museum is the 
manuscript harl, or Harleianus, of the sixth century, with a very 
good text. Apparently it was stolen by Jean Aymon from the 
library at Paris in the year 1707, and sold to Robert Harley. — 
Very properly we find at Madrid, in the National Library, a 
manuscript of the eighth century, tol, that used to be in Toledo, 
and that gives us the Vulgate text mingled with Spanish 
readings. — There is also a harl, or Harley manuscript, for the 
book of Acts, which is of the ninth century, and which like the 
one of the Gospels just mentioned appeared to have found its 
way in 1707 under Jean Aymon's auspices to Robert Harley 
and thus finally to the British Museum. But this manuscript 
seems to be of the Old Latin and not of the Vulgate form, so 
that it belongs in the foregoing list, not here. 

We now turn to some manuscripts that have a passing Arabic 
number. — Number 5 belongs to Thomas Irwin in Oswego, New 
York, and is on purple parchment in golden writing. It seems to 
have been written in the eighth century. — Number 95 is in the 
University Library at Cambridge, England, and is of the eighth 
or ninth century, with an emendated Irish text. It is called the 
Book of Deer, because it used to be in the monastery of Deer 
or Deir in Aberdeenshire. — The same library contains my 
number 1020 of the eighth century, which offers the passion 
and the resurrection from the four Gospels. It appears to have 



TRANSLATIONS— LATIN 415 

been written for Ethelwald, the bishop of Lindisfarne. — Durham 
cathedral owns a mutilated copy of the Gospels and eleven leaves 
of another, both of the eighth century and with a good text ; 
in the list they are 115 and 116. — Another mutilated copy of 
the Gospels, 131, of the eighth or ninth century, belongs to 
Hereford cathedral. It is of the emendated Irish text. — The 
Book of Chad, 137, is the property of Lichfield cathedral, is 
of the seventh or eighth century, and contains the emendated 
Irish text of Matthew, Mark, and the beginning of Luke. — The 
Lindisfarne, or St. Cuthbert's gospels, 153, of the eighth 
century are in the British Museum. They are written in an 
Anglo-Saxon script, and contain betv/een the lines a series of 
Northumbrian glosses. 

The Coronation Book, 156, of the tenth century, in the British 
Museum, has many old readings in it. — The same library owns my 
number 184, of the eighth or ninth century, written in gold, and 
having a good text, — 185, of the ninth century, with a good text, 
— 186, of the ninth or tenth century, in red writing with a late text, 
— 187, of the ninth century, in gold script also with a late text, — 
234, of the eighth century, with a fine text, of the British family, — 
238, of the ninth century, Wordsworth's Beneventanus with a good 
text, — 239, of the tenth century, with some peculiar readings, 
from St. Petrocius in Bodmin in Cornwall among the Celts, — 240, 
of the ninth century, with Alcuin's text, called Charlemagne's 
Bible, from the monastery Moutier-Grand-Val, near Basel,— 
241, of the ninth century, well written and corrected, formerly 
in the possession of St. Cornelius of Compiegne, — and 254, 
of the ninth century, from St. Hubert, near Liege, containing 
parts of the Old Testament, the Gospel, the Epistles of Paul, 
James, and 1 Peter i 1 ^ 3 . — The Gospels of Mac Regol, 
502, are in the Bodleian at Oxford. They are of the ninth 
century, and give the emendated Irish text with the series of 
Northumbrian glosses between the lines. — Stonyhurst owns my 
number 523, the Gospel of John of the seventh century that 
was found in the year 1105 in the grave of St. Cuthbert. Its 
text is very good. — The imperial treasure-room at Vienna has 
my number 698, which used to be at Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), 
and which is called the Gospels of the Oath or the Gospels 
of Charlemagne. It is on purple parchment and is written in 
gold. — Similarly the City Library in Abbeville possesses a 



416 THE TEXT 

manuscript of the eighth century, my 774, written on puiple 
parchment in gold script. 

At Tours is number 913, of the ninth century in gold script. 
Formerly in St. Martin at Tours, it was the copy of the 
Gospels upon which the French kings from Louis vn. in the 
year 1137 to Louis xiv. in 1650 took their oath when they 
were first received as abbots or canons of that church. — The 
National Library at Paris owns my number 1265, St. Medard's 
Gospels of the eighth century written in gold script, and Theo- 
dulfs Bible of the ninth century, my number 1266, on purple 
parchment in gold script, — and 1267, of the eighth century, 
on purple parchment, — and 1269, of the eighth century, the 
Echternach Gospels, — and 1274, of the ninth century, the 
Corbey Bible, — and 1278, of the eighth century, on purple 
parchment in gold script, — and 1285, of the ninth century, the 
Gospels of Adalbald. — The City Library of Rheims has my 
number 1289, of the ninth century, a Bible which Hincmar 
presented to the cathedral there. — Number 14 19, of the ninth 
or tenth century, in the Royal Library at Berlin, is the Codex 
Witekind. — The University Library at Wiirzburg possesses seven 
fine manuscripts formerly in the cathedral there. My number 
1606 is a Matthew of the eighth century, — 1607 is a copy of the 
Gospels of the eighth century, — 1608 is also a copy of the Gospels 
of the eighth century, — 1609 offers Gospels from the end of the 
seventh century, — 1610, of the sixth century, is supposed to have 
belonged to St. Burkard of Wiirzburg ; it contains the Gospels, — 
161 1 is a copy of the Gospels of the ninth century, — and 161 2, 
the Gospels of the sixth century, is reputed to have belonged to 
St. Kilian the apostle of the Franks. — Quedlinburg owns my 
number 1859, the Gospels in gold script in uncial letters of the 
eighth century, possibly from the year 740. 

The City Library at Trier owns the Ada Codex of the eighth 
century, my 1877, written in gold script, and having pictures that 
are important for the history of art. — In Trinity College at Dublin 
is the Book of Armagh, my 1968, written in the year Si 2, contain- 
ing the New Testament in the emendated Irish text. — An eighth 
century copy of the Gospels, my 1969, named Domhnach Airgid, 
is in the Royal Irish Academy at Dublin. — My 1970 is in Trinity 
College there, and is a copy of the Gospels of the eighth century. 
— My 1 97 1 is also in Trinity College. It is of the ninth century, 



TRANSLATIONS— GOTHIC 417 

and is called the Book of Moling or Mulling. This and 1968 
are two of the most important Irish manuscripts. — My 1972, 
in the same library, the Gospels of the seventh or eighth century, 
is called the Book of Kells. — Similarly 1973, at the same place, 
the Gospels of the eighth century, is called the Book of Durrow. — 
And 1974, also there, of the ninth century, the Gospels, is called 
the Book of Dimma. These fantastic old names seem to carry 
us back to the days of the elves and fairies among the oaks 
of the Druids. — Number 2138, a Bible of the ninth century, 
is at Rome, in St. Paul Outside the Walls. It was used by the 
scholars who corrected the text of the Vulgate at the desire 
of Pius iv. — Number 2225 is in the Royal Library at Stockholm, 
and is of the sixth or seventh century, partly on purple parchment 
in gold script. The Gospels in it appear to be of a Vulgate type, 
but to have been corrected according to an Old-Latin text. It 
is likely that this book was written by Irishmen in Italy. King 
Alfred gave it to the Cathedral at Canterbury. The Swedish 
scholar John Gabriel Sparwenfeldt bought it in Spain in 1690 
and gave it to the library at Stockholm. — In Prague, in the Stift 
Strahov, is a copy of the Gospels of the ninth century which used 
to belong to St. Martin's on the Mosel. Herewith we leave the 
Latin translation of the New Testament. 



Gothic Translation. 

The Gothic translation is due to the Bishop Wulfila, who was 
born about the year 310 and died about 380. In translating 
the greater part of the Bible about the middle of the fourth 
century, he seems to have used for the New Testament a Greek 
text which was largely of a later type, and which nevertheless 
contained many old readings. Some scholars, urging that the 
text of the Gothic was much like the Latin text in certain readings 
and interpolations, and laying stress on the fact that the four 
Gospels stood in the Western order : Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, 
came to the conclusion that this translation of Wulfila's was 
revised in the fifth century or later, while the Goths were in Italy 
and Spain, and that not after a Greek text of the New Testament, 
but after the Italian form of the Old-Latin translation. It must 
be conceded that such a thing would be conceivable. Yet the 
27 



41 8 THE TEXT 

circumstances do not call for a supposition of this kind. The 
similarity of text could be due to the Greek manuscripts used by 
Wulfila and his correctors. And, moreover, the chapters and the 
lessons in one of the Gothic manuscripts agree with those of 
Euthalius. All our discussions about this translation suffer from 
the fact that we have but little of it to judge by. There is a 
fragmentary manuscript of the four Gospels, and there are a few 
further fragments of the Gospels with fragments of the Epistles of 
Paul. Thus far we have found no manuscripts of the Acts, of 
the Catholic Epistles, or of Revelation. The one larger manu- 
script is the Codex Argenteus, of the sixth century, in the 
University Library at Upsala, on purple parchment in silver letters. 
It may have been written in Northern Italy. In the sixteenth 
century it was in the monastery Werden in Westphalia, and at the 
close of that century at Prague. In 1648 it travelled to Stock- 
holm as booty of war. Perhaps it was given to Isaac Voss, the 
librarian of Queen Christina, for it was at Voss' in Holland in 
1655. In 1662, Count Magnus Gabriele de la Gardie bought it 
and gave it to the University at Upsala. It was well travelled. 
The remaining fragments in Milan, Rome, Turin, and Wolfenbiittel 
are all palimpsest, and all of the sixth century. 



Slavic Translation. 

The Slavic translation is usually attributed to a Thessalonian 
named Constantin, but renamed Cyrill, who was called by Rastislav, 
the Duke of Moravia, in the year 862 to come and preach the 
gospel in his domains. Cyrill and his brother Methodius went 
thither, made a Slavic alphabet drawn chiefly from the Greek 
alphabet, and translated the New Testament into Slavic. Per- 
haps they translated merely the Church lessons, therefore 
omitting the Revelation. The Greek manuscripts which they 
used were apparently chiefly of a later type. There are a great 
many Slavic manuscripts in Russia, and we certainly shall some 
day have from a Russian scholar a grand catalogue of them all 
as a basis for critical work upon them. 



419 



VII. 

CHURCH WRITERS. 

It might seem to a person approaching this field for the first 
time that the witnesses to the ancient condition of the text were 
now exhausted. We have called up the array of the Greek copies 
of the books of the New Testament, we have seen the full ranks 
of the volumes containing the lessons to be read in the Greek 
Church, and we have just left the great corps of the translations 
of the sacred text. That must be all. It is certainly a great deal, 
but it is not all. Nor may we stop short of all. Were we 
concerned with the text of Shakespeare or Dante or Goethe it 
might be pardonable to pass by some less direct evidences of their 
utterances or sentences. In the case of the New Testament it 
would be a crime to fail to approach the last witness, to omit the 
last question that could be put, in order to gain a ray of light upon 
its history, in order to solve a problem touching the form of its 
original text. 

In the case of the witnesses thus far called upon the stand, 
the clerical character of their testimony prevailed, and especially 
the liturgical character. For although many a book was in old 
times written for private possession and use, nevertheless a large 
number of the manuscripts in all the series that we have scanned 
up to this point were directly written for use in the churches. 
Many even of the volumes written at private order, at the order 
of laymen or of lay women, were ordered solely for the purpose of 
being given to a cathedral, to a monastery, or to the church of 
the choice of the one ordering the work. All of the books had 
but one aim, and this aim was the text of the New Testament 
itself. 

In the books of the New Testament we find that reference is 
made to previous works, and above all to the Old Testament. 
We are able to see from these references what the state of the 
text of the Old Testament then was. In Luke n 49 Jesus says: 
" On this account also the wisdom of God said : I will send to 



420 THE TEXT 

them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will slay and 
will persecute : in order that the blood of all the prophets, that 
was shed from the foundation of the world, from the blood of 
Abel unto the blood of Zachariah, who was slain between the altar 
of burnt-offering and the temple, should be demanded from this 
generation." Whence this quotation came, we do not in the 
least know. It appears to be from some apocryphal book. In 
Acts 20 35 Paul says to the elders of Ephesus who had met him 
at Miletus : " And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that 
He said : It is more blessed to give than to receive." We do not 
know whence Paul drew these words. That is to say, we have 
no clue to the line of oral, word of mouth, tradition which 
supplied them to Paul, and no clue to the connection of that 
unknown line of tradition with the written accounts in our 
Gospels. And Jude 17 writes: "And ye, beloved, remember 
the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, that they said to you : At the end of the age there 
shall be scoffers walking in the way of ungodliness according to 
their own lusts." To what passage he refers, or whether he 
refers to any definite single passage, is not known. The author 
of the late letter, Second Peter, quotes this all, 2 Pet. 3 s , as if it 
were his own, but reinforcing and paraphrasing it or spreading 
it out. 

As Jesus quoted, as the apostles quoted from the Old Testa- 
ment, as Paul quoted Jesus, and as Jude quoted we know not 
whom, so also the Christians who wrote letters and treatises 
of Christian contents quoted Jesus and the apostles and the 
non-apostolic writers of New Testament books. Their quotations, 
then, may sometimes be of use to us in our attempt to determine 
the original words of the text of these books. Their use of these 
books forms for us the last source of testimony to the text we are 
seeking. When we turned to the translations, I emphasised the 
fact that those translations gave us a certain localisation of the 
readings which they contained, and thereby helped determine 
in the most certain manner the spread of given forms of text in 
early times. It will be at once apparent that Christian writers 
who quote the words of the New Testament must in like manner 
localise readings, give a definite knowledge of the presence of 
given readings in certain places. 

It is, of course, necessary to keep in mind the fact that 



CHURCH WRITERS 42 1 

writers sometimes journeyed afar, that Irenaeus was of Smyrna, 
but also of Lyons, and visited Rome; that Origen was of 
Alexandria, but that he visited Rome and Arabia, and that he 
lived long at Caesarea; that Gregory of Nazianzus was of Asia 
Minor, but visited Athens, and Alexandria, and Caesarea, and 
Constantinople ; that Jerome came from Dalmatia, but visited 
Rome, and Gaul, and Alexandria, and Antioch, and Con- 
stantinople, and spent the last thirty and more years of his life 
at Bethlehem. But it does not follow that a man changed his 
text because he changed his residence. It would probably be 
nearer the truth to place the word text for mind in Horace's 
verse. When a man had been brought up on a given form of the 
New Testament, he was likely, other things being equal, to stick 
to it. Had he the means to make a journey, he had doubtless 
also the means to buy a copy of the New Testament suited to 
travel with him. Of course he may have been persuaded tc 
accept a new reading on due evidence in place of an old one, 
but his general text is likely to have remained the old-accustomed 
text. And whatever he accepted, so was that reading, if he 
returned and lived again in his early home, a reading that also 
was found at that place, and, if he was a man of weight, a reading 
that may have come to prevail there. 

The reading, the cast of text that is found in a Church writer 
has, however, in one respect a great advantage over the reading 
found in a translation, namely, that it is by its connection with 
the author in most cases definitely dated as well as placed. 
That is very important. It is true that there are drawbacks 
that lessen the value of the testimony, or we may say lessen 
the amount of testimony that we can get from the Church writers. 
One of these drawbacks became very apparent during the dis- 
cussion of the criticism of the canon, namely, the loose way in 
which these writers like other writers often quote. In spite of 
this difficulty we may gain much even from such writers, even 
from writers who quote in a free way, and it need not be said 
that there are writers who often quote carefully. Yet even a 
carelessly presented sentence may assure us of the presence 
of one or another important element in the readings that the 
passage offers in various witnesses, and be enough to fix a date 
and place for it. The very point that the author using it is 
trying to make, may decide the form of the text to which he is 



422 THE TEXT 

accustomed. Another drawback is to be found at times in the. 
silence of an author. We observed in the criticism of the canon 
that it would not do to lay all too great stress upon the silence in 
reference to a questioned fact. We saw that it was more than 
once, humanly speaking, only the merest chance that a passing 
sentence occasioned by the most trifling circumstance gave us a 
view of the opinion of the writer touching the mooted point. 

In one way these Church writers can be of use to us even in re- 
spect to passages which they do not directly quote. We can apply 
their testimony indirectly. In dealing with the witnesses to the 
text it is often of great weight to determine the habits of a given 
witness, whether that witness be a Greek manuscript or a manu- 
script of a translation, or even a Church writer. If we know the 
habits, the inclinations, the virtues, and the faults of a witness, 
we are in a position to understand, to determine the value of, 
and to apply its testimony in a much more certain and more 
effectual and more just way, than if we merely consider its 
testimony for each single passage in isolation from its further 
testimony. Now a Church writer may by his whole series of 
quotations establish in a comparatively definite manner and to a 
very great extent the character of a witness of another class. 
There are even cases in which it seems almost as if, for example, 
a given manuscript in our hands had been the volume from which 
the writer concerned had copied out his quotations. The con- 
clusion at which we are aiming is then clear. By enabling us to 
determine the relations of the text of that other witness, to be 
sure of its speaking for a certain time and place, whatever other 
times and places it may represent, the writer has given us a 
criterion for the decision as to all readings which that witness 
offers, even though he himself may not have quoted them. 

By themselves, without Greek manuscripts and without trans- 
lations, the Church writers cannot decide that a reading is genuine. 
They are too late and too uncertain for that. We might say that 
they could under the best of circumstances, if all other witnesses 
were lacking, only serve to bolster up a conjecture. The case of 
the book of Revelation is peculiar, and is by no means clear to 
us. We have already perceived that a large number of the 
manuscripts which contain that book, contain it in combination 
with the commentary of Andrew of Caesarea or of Arethas of 
Csesarea. It would be conceivable that a man copy some text 



CHURCH WRITERS 423 

of the Revelation that pleased him, and add to it one of those 
commentaries in spite of their being written in connection with 
another form of the text. That would be possible, but only 
barely possible and not in the least likely. Moreover, if I am 
right in thinking at this moment that the greater number of these 
commentated texts of Revelation have the text and commentary 
intimately combined in irregularly measured sentences, but such 
as follow closely upon one another without appreciable break, 
then it is all the less probable that scribes or scholars joined the 
commentary to their own peculiar texts. Therefore these 
manuscripts should, as a rule, offer to us the text or the texts 
approved by those two writers. 

When I was a student of theology over forty years ago, I 
spent two years with great profit in the theological seminary of a 
Church, not my own, in which a warm discussion was being 
carried on as to the use of hymns and as to the use of organs. 
During the course of the debate in the journal of the Church, the 
more progressive members who were for greater freedom appealed 
to the testimony of the Israelitic scholars who were accessible, 
appealed to their testimony as to certain facts connected with the 
Jewish interpretation of some passages of the Old Testament 
which had been brought into evidence. In the next lecture after 
the appearance of the article containing the appeal to the 
testimony of these scholars, the professor who led the opposition 
referred to the matter, and said among other things as a final and 
unanswerable rebuttal of that testimony : " The Jews crucified 
Christ, and therefore the Jews will lie. 1 ' That was indeed an 
unanswerable argument, or an argument that needed no answer. 
The point of the story for the criticism of the text of the New 
Testament lies in the distinction between opinion and fact, in the 
necessity of accepting gladly all testimony to facts of textual 
history, without the least respect to the theological opinions 
which the witness cherishes. Whether a Marcionite or a 
Montanist or an Arian or a Pelagian sees and chronicles a 
reading, or whether Tertullian, who here rides two horses, or 
Epiphanius, or Athanasius, or Augustine, uses it, is as to the 
point of the existence of the reading at the given times and 
places totally indifferent. 

The facts are what we are after, not the theology of a 
witness. Indeed it has happened, and not merely once, that 



424 THE TEXT 

heretics, that men who have dared to think differently from 
the leaders of the Church, have been accused of tampering 
with the text and of having used spurious readings ; and yet 
that we can see, not only that they had not in the given cases 
tampered with the text, but that they, in fact, had really had the 
right reading, and their churchly accusers the wrong one. The 
testimony that we draw in such a case from one side is just 
as good, just as valuable scientifically, as that which we draw 
from the other. What the men had before their eyes were the 
hard facts. I need scarcely add that the fact that the heretics 
have sometimes had the good readings is not in general to be 
attributed to a higher or better or more critical insight on their 
part into the then so little known intricacies of textual tradition 
and of the way in which to unravel them. They had the better 
readings, because in the given cases they had received in the 
course of their theological and ecclesiastical training and life the 
better manuscripts. They had not chosen them, but merely 
received them in the current of tradition that struck their shore. 

The Greek manuscripts of the text of the New Testament 
were often altered by scribes, who put into them the readings 
which were familiar to them, and which they held to be the right 
readings. In a similar manner, words from the New Testament, 
which a Church writer has used in his works, have been modified 
by scribes and made to agree with the text in the hand of the 
copyists. It is sometimes possible to detect the fraud by the 
fact that the surroundings of the quotation which has been 
corrupted show it to be false. The commentary, if it stands in 
a commentary, may treat of totally different words from the ones 
now put before our eyes. And if it be a treatise of some kind, 
the application of the words may depend upon a thought not 
found in the spurious sentence. These reflections lead us to the 
whole question of the way in which the works of the Church 
writers have been handed down to us. It is not to be forgotten 
that they, like the translations, are also so many needy beggars for 
a special application of criticism to their writings. They stretch 
out their hands across the centuries to Christian scholars of 
the twentieth century and entreat them to free them from the 
corruption and dross that spoil their works. We cannot properly, 
that is to say, with definite and final certainty, apply their 
testimony to the criticism of the text until we have accurate 



CHURCH WRITERS— TATIAN, IREN^US 425 

scientific editions of them. Yet it is impossible to stand and 
wait until that great task is done. The New Testament must bd 
furthered as well as the present circumstances admit. The 
future will stand upon our shoulders, will see further into the 
past, then men will have new witnesses, and will have better 
editions of the witnesses than we have. All such tasks intercalate. 
The work of bettering the text of the Church writers is rendered 
more easy by every step gained in the understanding of the 
connections and relations of the various readings of the text of 
the New Testament. No scholar should pretend to approach 
the textual work upon a Church writer before he has made 
himself thoroughly acquainted with the problems in the criticism 
of the text of the New Testament, seeing that they may often 
afford him valuable aid in judging of the manuscripts of the 
writer whom he is editing. 

The very earliest of the Christian writers did not make a 
point of quoting the New Testament with any precision. The 
New Testament was in a way for them the air in which they 
lived. They breathed it in. It filled their hearts and their 
minds. It poured forth from their lips and their pens. What 
poured forth was not word for word that which had been 
breathed into their nostrils, sounded into their ears, devoured by 
their eyes, and digested in their minds. The sense was there, 
not the form. In many passages we see the New Testament 
gold glinting among their sentences like the particles of foil that 
are scattered throughout a solution. When we try to seize a 
sentence it disperses, it vanishes before our eyes. The moment 
we read again we see it return. 



Tatian, Iren^eus. 

One book, a book by a man who came to bear the title 
of heretic, a book which certainly did valiant service in its 
day and generation, had a less favourable influence upon the 
text of the first part of the New Testament. This was Tatian's 
Harmony of the Four Gospels, the book called " Through Four " 
or Diatessaron. Four Gospels there were, but these four when 
closely regarded resolved themselves into two Gospels, the first 
of which had a triple form. The first three Gospels are to such 



426 THE TEXT 

a high degree not merely connected with but interwoven with 
each other, that their texts must of necessity have been inclined 
from the first moment of their contemporaneous existence to 
run together. When, then, Tatian proceeded actually to weld 
their particles into one coherent whole, it must have been 
next to impossible to prevent readings from his work from 
passing over into the texts of the single, separate Gospels. 
I have already said that I suppose his Harmony to have been 
originally Greek. We possess it to-day unfortunately neither 
in Greek nor in Syrian. Wherever it appeared — it also passed 
over into Armenian and into Arabic — it must have exerted 
the same confusing and confounding influence. We have, when 
we are treating the tangled verses of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, 
to ask ourselves whether they were by accident or of set purpose 
combined by scribes who simply had these three Gospels in 
their hands, — or whether the disorder has proceeded from the 
circumstance that a scribe has transferred to the Gospels them- 
selves phrases which he found ready combined on the pages of 
the Diatessaron. 

The great treatise of Irenaeus against heretics is in one 
respect the object of much longing on the part of the critics 
of the text of the New Testament. He wrote this treatise in 
Greek, and he packed it full of quotations from the New Testa- 
ment. He wrote, it is true, say about the year 185, yet the 
manuscripts that he used must needs have been representa- 
tives of a much older text. The New Testament of that date 
would stand before our eyes in a very much clearer form could 
we exchange our Latin translation of Irenaeus for his original 
Greek text. May it soon be found. Should we find it, it will 
be sure, like every new find, to answer some questions, but 
also to put a number of new questions. One asks in advance 
whether we should expect to find in his text the product 
of Asia Minor or of Lyons. I think that Smyrna, Asia Minor, 
must be the source of his text. It does not seem to me that 
the raising of Greek texts is to be supposed to have been a 
specialty of the Christian husbandmen in the cities of Gaul. 
They were probably in this respect consumers and not producers. 
They were heroes, those early Christians in Vienne and Lyons, 
but I do not think that the heathen around them left them much 
time for textual criticism. 



CHURCH WRITERS 427 



Origen. 



Our thoughts about Origen are not so very different from 
those that we cherish in regard to the treatise of Irenaeus. 
The reason, however, that the translations of Origen's works, 
which in many cases is all that we have left of them, are less 
satisfactory, is that his translators, and in particular Rufinus, 
were bent upon making him less heretical than he was. Rufinus 
is quite frank and open about it, and it was undoubtedly, I 
think, a matter of conscience with him, but it renders the books 
much less valuable for the purposes of textual criticism. A 
translator who confessedly changes the commentary wherever his 
fancy or his orthodoxy leads him to differ from Origen, will, of 
course, not stick at changing the text from Origen's form to the 
form that he himself daily used. But Origen does in some 
passages do a great deal for the textual critic. He was by nature 
and by practice an exact scholar for that period. His textual 
researches in reference to the Old Testament have scarcely a 
parallel in all antiquity, unless it be in the work of the school at 
Antioch, of which we, however, have scarcely any mention 
except in Syrian manuscripts. 

The question is often asked, whether he did not also treat 
the text of the New Testament critically. That he treated 
many a reading critically is not to be doubted. That he 
systematically revised the text of the whole New Testament 
is nowhere reported. His commentaries give, nevertheless, 
many a note about readings, and occasionally full discussion 
of them. His judgment as to readings is nothing or next to 
nothing for us. His facts are what we care for. When he 
found a reading in a number of manuscripts, that meant some- 
thing, for every one of them was at least a hundred years older 
than the Sinaitic and the Vatican manuscript. The fame of 
Origen in all parts of the world, the number of Christian theo- 
logians who sat at his feet, must have tended to spread his 
readings. The hypothesis has been suggested, that some pupil 
or admirer of Origen made a point of inserting into the text of 
the New Testament the readings which Origen had approved in 
his works. This would have been possible. We have, however, 
no testimony for it. 



4-28 THE TEXT 

As the years advance the literature ceases to be so frag- 
mentary as it had been in the second and third and early fourth 
century. The Church came to be openly acknowledged and 
favoured. Chrysostom, the golden mouthed orator, born and 
working in Antioch, and at the end living at Constantinople or 
in exile, exerted a wide influence as a preacher, an exegete, and 
an author. His writings are numerously represented in the 
libraries of Greek manuscripts, whether in the East or in the 
West. But by his day the text had almost completed the round 
of its fates, so that he cannot open for us the door to its secret 
history in the earlier periods. 

The translations of the New Testament into various languages 
were found to be of much use for the criticism of the text. In 
like manner the Church writers who used not Greek but Syriac 
or Armenian, or Coptic, or Latin, find a place in these studies. 
Their testimony applies in most cases first of all to the trans- 
lation of the New Testament into the language which they used, 
and through it to the original text. Yet a learned man often 
used for his studies a Greek manuscript, so that the distance 
between the original text and his commentary was not after all 
very great. Thus far we do not know very much about the 
works of the ancient Church writers, who used Syriac or Coptic 
or Ethiopic. It is clear that at an early period Antioch paid 
great attention to the text, and wrote books of the most exact 
critical character, collections of variations, notes as to corrections, 
and we may say in general a critical Masora for the New Testa- 
ment text. Egypt and Ethiopia must still give us much. 
Armenia has given much and will surely give more. The 
Archimandrite Karapet has just published an unknown book, 
a book till then known only as a title, that was written by 
Irenaeus. Among Latin writers, Tertullian offers much for the 
criticism of the text. There is one curious thing about him, 
about his relation to the text. Imagine how peculiar it is that 
a good author, a man of great intelligence, of high educa- 
tion, and of at least some travel, should transpose two petitions 
in the Lord's Prayer. Nor is the transposition a mere pass- 
ing change, a variation that might be attributed to a scribe's 
or to Tertullian's own carelessness, for he is commenting at 
length upon the prayer. Scarcely less strange is the fact that 
we find this transposition neither in other writers in his neigh- 



CHURCH WRITERS 429 

bourhood nor anywhere else. Many a book originally written 
in Greek or another tongue used in the East, is only preserved 
to us in a Latin translation, and we must be glad that we have 
that much of the writings in question. Each such translation 
demands, then, for itself a critical treatment before we can be 
sure how much we may rely upon its faithfulness to the original, 
and in scripture quotations how far we may be sure that the trans- 
lator did not change them to fit his own accustomed form of text. 
Julius Africanus, whose name seems to point to his birth in 
Africa, presents us a case of a Christian who was not unknown 
to the heathen authorities. He probably lived from about 
170 to 240. His home was one of the Palestinian Emmasus 
towns, but he visited Alexandria, Rome, and Asia Minor. This 
town Emmaeus, about thirty-five kilometres from Jerusalem, was 
rebuilt by him under the auspices of Heliogabalus (218-222), 
to whom he went on an embassy asking help, and it was then 
named Nikopolis. Africanus was one of the most learned 
Christians of the early Church, and deserves a place beside the 
great Alexandrians Clement and Origen. Unfortunately his 
writings are not well preserved. His great work was a chrono- 
graphy. He wrote a letter to Aristides touching the conflicting 
genealogies of Jesus. — Ammonius, who lived at Alexandria at 
the time of Origen, was a philosopher, but as well a Christian ; 
and he wrote a harmony of the Gospels that has, unfortunately 
for us, not unfortunately for the text of the four Gospels, long 
been lost. The sections that belong to Eusebius used to be 
attributed erroneously to him. — A Syrian writer, James Aphraates, 
or Aphrahat, or Farhad, who was bishop in the monastery of 
Matthew, near Mosul, lived about the middle of the fourth 
century. His homilies give us much that is important for the 
history of the text in Syria. — A Latin companion for the com- 
mentaries of Andrew and Arethas of Caesarea would be found 
in a work written about the year 540, if we only had a com- 
plete copy of it. Its author was Aprigius or Apringius, who was 
bishop of Pax Julia or Beja in Portugal — not of Pax Augusta or 
Badajoz, in Spain, as that city dreams. — Cyprian is a very good 
writer for the purposes of textual criticism. It would be con- 
venient to have a Greek writer like him every fifty years from 
Paul to Eusebius. Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus was made 
bishop of Carthage about 248, and died in 258. He quotes 



430 THE TEXT 

scripture constantly, and in large sections or long passages, 
which he must needs have taken from the roll, and not have 
written down from memory. Although he is a Latin writer, and 
although he is so near to Tertullian, he betrays no acquaintance 
with that curious Lord's Prayer of Tertullian's. 



Second Century Writers. 

Let us ask ourselves in land after land what witnesses were 
to be had during the second century. We begin with Syria. 
At the opening of the century we find Ignatius, the bishop of 
Antioch, who was martyred, perhaps about 117. His New 
Testament will have been a very early one, will have been one 
that had not yet been compacted together, but was living along 
in the rolls of the separate books. Next comes Hegesippus, 
the traveller and writer, whose book we long to have. Justin 
the martyr follows, and passes from Samaria to Italy, and 
becomes a teacher of many in Rome. Tatian approaches, pos- 
sibly from Eastern Syria, but a Greek and raised as a Greek. 
Theophilus of Antioch quotes much scripture to his heathen 
friend Autolycus, but chiefly Old Testament passages, because 
he is urging the antiquity of Christianity. And for a side-light 
we may name Manes in Persia. Of course, we should like to 
have more witnesses for Syria for the space of a hundred years, 
but these would give us at least a slight notion of the state of 
affairs in textual matters if we had all their writings. To these 
writers we must then add the Old-Syrian translation. So much 
for Syria, although we must not forget that some of these 
witnesses had, like Hegesippus, Justin, and Tatian, connections 
with the West, with Rome. 

If we turn to Egypt, it is probable that we should name first 
of all the letter of Barnabas. It seems to belong there. Then 
comes the important writer Clement of Alexandria, from whom 
we have fair remains. Then we may hypothetically attribute 
the Teaching of the Apostles to Egypt. The Boheiric and Sai'dic 
translations bring much material for the text. The side-lights 
here are Apelles and Basilides and Valentinus, who was also at 
Rome, perhaps Ptolemaeus and the Antitactae, and then Carpo- 
crates. Of these Clement is in himself a host. 



CHURCH WRITERS— SECOND AND THIRD CENTURY 43 1 

Asia Minor recalls to us the valiant old Polycarp and his 
letter, and as well the story of his martyrdom. Then comes 
Papias, whose book will surely some day open new vistas for 
textual criticism. The presbyter or the presbyters whom 
Irenaeus names, belong here, and so do Polycrates, and Melito 
of Sardes. 

In Greece two apologists come to meet us, Aristides, to whom 
Julius Africanus wrote the letter about the genealogies of Jesus, 
and Athenagoras. 

In Italy we have two to mention who came from Asia Minor, 
and who might be attached to that land, namely, Marcion, the 
daring and reckless critic, and Theodotus. Victor of Rome 
must be added tentatively. 

From North Africa we receive the Acts of Perpetua, which 
may even have been written by Tertullian himself, and the Old- 
Latin translation. 

In Gaul we are again reminded of Asia Minor, for Irenaeus, 
the bishop of Lyons, came from Smyrna. And in Gaul the 
Churches of Vienne and Lyons speak in no uncertain tone. 

We may give in closing a few names that we do not know 
precisely how to limit geographically. There is the Letter to 
Diognetus. Heracleon is an important writer. Hermias the 
philosopher may belong to this century, but is placed by others 
at a later point. As side-lights we have the Docetae, the Encra- 
titae, the Marcosians, the Naassenes, the Peratae, and the Valen- 
tinians. 

Third Century Writers. 

The third century offers us, in Syria, Julius Africanus, who 
might have been connected with the close of the second century. 
Archelaus follows, who was the bishop of Chascar in Mesopo- 
tamia about the year 278. And in Methodius Eubulius, the 
so-called bishop of Tyre, we have possibly not a Tyrian but the 
bishop of Olympia in Lycia. He died as a martyr in 311 at 
Chalcis in Greece, or in Ccele-Syria. Paul of Samosata, bolstered 
up by royalty, may form a transition to the heathen philosopher 
Porphyrius of Tyre, who wrote fifteen books against the Christians, 
that disappeared long ago. — Egypt supplies us here with the 
name of the most powerful of the Christian writers, Origen, 



432 THE TEXT 

whom we could well also bring forward for Palestine, because of 
his long residence at Csesarea. His successor, Dionysius of 
Alexandria, was a man who thought for himself, as we saw from 
his discussion of the Revelation. Ammonius belongs here, whom 
we mentioned a moment ago. Peter of Alexandria passes over 
into the fourth century, dying as a martyr in 311. Alexander 
of Lycopolis wrote against Manichseism, and reaches into the 
fourth century also. Theognostus followed Pierius as head of 
the school in Alexandria. He flourished about the year 283. 
Adimantus was one of the twelve disciples of Manes. He 
flourished about 277, but his influence would appear to have 
been lasting, seeing that Augustine wrote a book against him. 
The Pistis Sophia is a notable book from the Valentinian 
school, written in Sai'dic. — In Asia Minor we may name Firmilian, . 
who was a friend of Origen's, and who was bishop of Caesarea 
in Cappadocia in 233 ; and Gregory the Wonder-Worker, who 
was born at New Csesarea in Cappadocia, and who died as 
bishop there perhaps in 265 or 270. — Italy furnishes the great 
name of Hippolytus. Would that we had his complete works, 
and not merely the names of the most of them. Besides him 
we may point to Callistus, Cornelius, Gaius, and Novatian. — 
In North Africa we have two names that give us a great deal 
of help : Tertullian and Cyprian. From Pannonia we have 
Victorinus, who may have been by birth a Greek. He was 
bishop of Pettau about the year 290, and died a martyr's 
death about 303. Apollonius is not certainly to be localised. 
It may be that he belongs to Asia Minor. The Apostolical 
Constitutions have varied relations of date and probably of place. 



Fourth Century Writers. 

The fourth century brings, with the new freedom for the 
Church, with the dangerous attachment to the royal houses, 
the closing great movements for the correction of the text. 
Now the writers multiply apace. In Syria we have Aphraates 
and Ephraim, and then Jacob or James of Nisibis, and Titus 
the bishop of Bostra in Arabia. Titus wrote against the Mani- 
chasans, and a very common chain for the text of Luke is largely 
drawn from his writings. On the Greek side of Syrian life stands 



CHURCH WRITERS— FOURTH CENTURY 433 

Pamphilus whom we know well, and his friend and mourner 
Eusebius of Csesarea. Then we find Acacius the One-Eyed, 
who was a pupil of Eusebius', and became his successor as bishop 
of Caesarea in the year 340. Cyril of Jerusalem was bishop 
from 350 until 386, but he was driven away from Jerusalem three 
times. Chrysostom belongs here, for Constantinople had but 
a few years from him. Diodorus was born in Antioch, and was 
bishop of Tarsus from about 379 to 390. He wrote a great deal, 
but we have only trifling fragments of his works, chiefly found 
in chains. From Eusebius of Emesa or Horns, of about the 
year 350, we have a few remains. Eustathius, elected bishop of 
Antioch by the Council of Nice, and soon harried out of his chair 
by the Arians, is known to us by some few fragments. We may 
add Macarius 1., bishop of Jerusalem, and Meletius an Armenian, 
bishop of Sebaste, and in the year 360 bishop of Antioch. The 
Latin contribution from Syria is a large one, for it consists of 
over thirty years of the life of Jerome the Dalmatian. 

If the suppositions of some scholars correspond to the facts 
of the past, Egypt gave us the great Sinaitic and Vatican manu- 
scripts during this century. From Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, 
say from 313 until 326, an opponent of Arius', we have two letters, 
one touching the heresy of, and the other the deposition of Arius. 
Arius himself must be named, and the other side in Athanasius, 
and with them Didymus, then a mere boy, who died in 394 or 
399, and Evagrius, who was archdeacon in Constantinople, and 
then a monk at Scetis in Egypt, and Theophilus, who became 
bishop of Alexandria in 385, and died in 412, and Timotheus, 
the predecessor of Theophilus. To these may be added 
Macarius Magnes, Marcus Diadochus, who also was at Rome 
and in North Africa, Marcus the Monk, Thalassius in Libya, 
Isaiah, Serapion, Antonius, Orsiesis, and Phileas, We join the 
Ethiopic translation on to these Egyptian names. 



Asia Minor. 

In Asia Minor we have Amphilochius, the bishop of Iconium, 

about the year 370. Asterius, by birth a heathen from Cappadocia, 

converted in the year 304, afterwards a zealous Arian, and who 

wrote commentaries to the Psalms, the Gospels, and Romans, 

28 



434 TIIE TEXT 

is only known by fragments in the chains. Basil the Great, 
bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, was born in 329 and died 
379. The two Apollinarius were father and son. The father, 
born in Alexandria, became after the year 335 presbyter of 
Laodicea. The son was bishop of Laodicea, but turned heretic. 
He died about 392. Caesarius of Nazianzus was a brother of 
Gregory of Nazianzus, and died in 368. Epiphanius, who was 
born in Palestine, became in 368 bishop of Salamis, later named 
Constantia, on the island of Cyprus. He died in 402. His 
works are extremely important for us. Eunomius was born in 
Dacora near Caesarea in Cappadocia, and became bishop of 
Cyzicus in the year 360. He was expelled and exiled as an 
Arian, and died, very old, at Dacora. His Presentation of Faith 
was laid before Theodosius in 383. His Apologetic was directed 
against the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity. Gregory of Nazianzus 
we have already discussed. He died in 389. Gregory of Nyssa 
became bishop there about the year 370. Marcellus, the 
bishop of Ancyra in Galatia, died in 372. 

We may mention in Constantinople, Macedonius, who was 
originally a feather merchant, but who became a priest, and then 
bishop at Constantinople. He denied the divinity of the Holy 
Ghost. His opponents disposed of his arguments in a most 
Christian and highly effectual manner, by killing him in a fight on 
the street. — In Thrace, at Heraclea on the Sea of Marmora, 
Theodore of that city became bishop in it in the year 334. He 
died about the year 358. — Italy gives us in this century the Codex 
of Vercelli, the manuscript a of the Latin Gospels. Ambrose the 
mayor and bishop belongs here, who flourished from 374 until 
397. A not certainly known author, perhaps Faustinus, is 
associated with Ambrosius as a Pseudo-Ambrosius or Ambrosi- 
aster. His commentaries on the Epistles of Paul were published 
with the works of Ambrosius. Fortunatianus was bishop of 
Aquileia about the year 340. Gaudentius was bishop of 
Brescia, perhaps from the year 387 onwards. Julius, the bishop 
of Rome from 337 to 352, wrote two letters which Athanasius 
gives us in the Apology for Flight. Lucifer, the bishop of 
Cagliari on Sardinia, was exiled four times. He died in 371. 

Paulinus reminds us of Ambrosius by his passage from State 
to Church. His name was Pontius Paulinus Meropius, and he 
was born in 353 at Bordeaux, having studied under Ausonius ; 



CHURCH WRITERS 435 

he later became Senator at Rome. He was baptized in the 
year 391, made a presbyter in the year 393, and was afterwards 
bishop of Nola in Campania, on which account he is sometimes 
named Paulinus Nolanus. He died in 431. Philaster or Philas- 
trius, possibly an Italian, was a great traveller. He became 
bishop of Brescia. He flourished about the year 380. We 
have his book about heresies. Siricius was a Roman. He 
became bishop in 385 and died in 398. Victorinus, Gaius 
Marius or Marius Fabius Victorinus, was a celebrated teacher of 
rhetoric at Rome, and taught among others Augustine. He 
passed from heathenism to Christianity before the year 361. 
He was a fertile writer. Zeno, from Africa, was bishop of 
Verona in the middle of the fourth century. We have sixty- 
seven sermons from him. Perhaps that Faustinus whom we 
mentioned above as a candidate for the works of Ambrosiaster 
was the author of Questions of the Old and New Testament, a 
work that also belongs to this century. 

In North Africa the great Augustine looms up before us ; 
born in 354, he died in 430. Faustus the Manichaean belonged 
to Mileve about the year 400. We can make the acquaintance of 
his heretical book in Augustine's answer to it. Optatus was bishop 
of Mileve about the year 368. He wrote against Parmenianus, 
the bishop of the Donatist heretics at Carthage. Tichonius or 
Tyconius, who lived towards the close of the fourth century, was 
perhaps a friend of the Donatists. There is a book on Re- 
baptizing among the works of Cyprian that may be from 
Africa, although it has been also assigned to Italy. — In Spain 
we have Juvencus, who was a poet as well as a presbyter. He 
wrote four books about the Gospel history in heroic verse, 
about the year 330. Pacianus was bishop of Barcelona about 
the year 370. Priscillian, the bishop of the fourth century, who 
held heretical views and who taught a Panchristism that disposed 
of the doctrine of the Trinity, is at the present moment especi- 
ally interesting, because it has been plausibly argued that the 
spurious verse in 1 John 5 7, 8 is to be attributed to him. 

In Gaul, Hilary of Poitiers filled a large place. He was pro- 
bably born about the year 310. He was a heathen, but became 
later a Christian. In 354 he was appointed bishop of Poitiers. 
Two years later, in 356, he was driven from his chair because he 
had attacked the Arians in Phrygia violently ; but he was rein- 



436 THE TEXT 

stated in 360, and died in 368. He wrote a commentary on 
Matthew, and one on the Psalms, and twelve books on the 
Trinity. Lactantius, the brilliant writer, the Christian Cicero, 
belongs both to Italy and to Gaul and perhaps also to North 
Africa. He was born about the year 260 in Italy, it would appear, 
though some say in Africa, went to Nicomedia probably soon 
after 290, and to Gaul about 307, dying there about 340. He 
wrote a book called Divine Institutions, and another On the 
Deaths of Persecutors. Phcebadius or Phcegadius was bishop of 
Agen in " Aquitania secunda." He was still alive in 392. He 
quoted very carefully from the text and not from memory. We 
have a book of his against the Arians. The Gothic translation 
may have been made on the banks of the Danube. Faustinus is 
of uncertain place, yet he may have been a Roman presbyter 
about the year 383, at the time of the schism of Lucifer. He 
wrote "to Galla Placidia on the Trinity or about Faith against 
the Arians." Maternus is also not to be placed definitely. 
He flourished about the year 34c, it may be, and wrote "about 
the errors of profane religions " to Constantius and Constans the 
emperors. Maximinus was a bishop of the Arians of unknown 
residence, against whom Augustine wrote two books. Therewith 
we may leave the review of the Church writers. 



43; 



VIII. 

PRINTED EDITIONS. 

The manuscripts of which we have spoken brought the text 
of the New Testament down to the sixteenth century. We are 
in danger of supposing that so soon as the first printed editions 
of the texts were issued, the manuscripts stopped short. Yet 
that is not the case. The New Testament of Alcala and that 
of Basel did not instantly spread like wildfire through the cities, 
towns, villages, and monasteries of the East. Many a manuscript 
was written after that time and even down into the nineteenth 
century, both of the continuous text and of the Church lessons. 
Nevertheless, the critic of the text has a good reason for busying 
himself less with these later volumes. He does not expect to 
find in them material which he has not at hand in other and 
earlier manuscripts. He examines each one in passing, so as 
to establish the connection of its text with other books, but he 
considers it likely that he has in his hands some nearer or more 
remote ancestor thereof. 

The beginning of the printed editions of the Greek Text of 
the New Testament was in more than one way different from 
what might have been anticipated. We pay so much attention 
to the Greek text and have such a high respect for it, that it 
is difficult for us to put ourselves in the place of the Christians 
in Europe at the opening of the printing-offices. To us it would 
seem as if the Greek Text must at once have been printed the 
moment that printing was invented. We should indeed not be 
surprised that the Bible in the various vernacular languages 
should be sent to the Press. Yet after these, practically valuable 
volumes, surely the Greek text must have been issued. But no. 
The West did not care particularly for the Greek Bible. The 
one great Bible of Western Europe was the Latin Bible. It was 
therefore the first or about the first object of the printer's skill. 
It may have appeared in the same year as the German Bible, 
or it may have been a few years in advance of it, but at any 



438 THE TEXT 

rate soon after the middle of the fifteenth century. That was 
the time at which the fall of Constantinople and the general 
inroads of the Turks were driving the educated Greeks to the 
West. They taught Greek wherever they settled, in Italy, and 
France, and England. But the scholars who were anxious to 
learn Greek did not apply it in the first instance to the New 
Testament. They were eager to delve into the profane literature 
of Greece. It was new to them. The Bible they had. 

The Greek immigrants did have to do with the Greek New 
Testament now and then, but it was not with the printing of it. 
Now and then they copied a Greek manuscript for a Western 
scholar. That was the due continuation of their past. They had 
nothing to do with printing the New Testament. It may be that 
Eastern Greeks, prelates or rich merchants, would have ordered 
editions of their sacred books in the forms of the new art, if the 
times had been quiet. But in the East all was turmoil and 
confusion. Property and life were the first concern of all. The 
Christians were happy if they succeeded in saving their old 
books from destruction, — and often they could not compass that, 
— and they had no time to think of having new books made, 
which they perhaps would be unable to protect from the swords 
and torches of their barbarous assailants. 

The first verses of the New Testament that were printed 
in Greek were, so far as we know, the hymns of Mary — or 
is it Elisabeth? — and of Zacharias from Luke 1 46 - 55 and 68 * 79 . 
The Greek psalms in the manuscripts had for centuries had 
as an appendix, not only the so-called one hundred and fifty- 
first Psalm, but also a series of Old Testament hymns, includ- 
ing the hymn of the Three Children, and the above hymns 
from the New Testament, to which the words of Simeon 
and a non-biblical morning hymn were often added. Now in 
the year 1481 a monk named John of Placenta published on 
the twentieth of September at Milan an edition of the Psalms 
in Greek, and in the appendix he placed those hymns out of the 
first chapter of Luke. There was after all a certain poetical 
propriety in the fact that those preliminary odes should have 
first found their way to the Press. Theologically speaking, the 
next fragment that was printed should have been the first, for 
it was John i 1 * 14 , the opening lesson on the great Easter Sunday, 
as we saw. It came out at Venice in the year 1495 in a volume 



PRINTED EDITIONS— COMPLUTUM 439 

containing the Questions of Constantine Lascar with a Latin 
translation. Still there is no Greek New Testament in print. 

The next printed fragment I might call larger, yet it was 
printed in a very fragmentary way, and in a way that speaks with 
but little favour for the knightly qualities of the printer, and for 
his appreciation of the value of the text of the New Testament 
and of the honour due to it. Aldo Manucci was the printer, we 
might almost say the culprit. In the year 1504 he printed at 
Venice, as the third volume of his Christian Poets, sixty-six 
poems of Gregory of Nazianzus. Besides the Greek text, he 
wished to give also a Latin translation, and that in such a way 
that it could be added to the Greek text by placing the double 
leaves within each other, or could be left out altogether if the 
buyer preferred. Of course, then the two inner middle pages of 
each Greek sheet had to be left free from the text of Gregory, 
because there would be no Latin companion for them. There 
were then fourteen double pages scattered through the whole 
book which would have to be left empty if the printer could 
not devise a special plan for filling them, a plan that would not 
affect the rest of the text. Manucci's plan, which he carried 
out so far as this book goes, was to print in these gaps the 
beginning of the Gospel of John. Accordingly we find on these 
helter-skelter pages John i 1 -6 58 in Greek and Latin. Under 
the Greek text in each sheet we read : " Look for the rest in the 
middle of the next quire." At the close of the table of contents 
he said that he would continue the Gospel of John in his trans- 
lation of Nonnus of Panopolis. Probably he was prevented 
from printing that, for no copy of it from his press is known. 
That was not a respectful way to treat scripture, to use it as 
a mere fill-gap. 

Alcala-Complutum. 

But at last we shall reach, just ten years later, a printed copy 
of the Greek New Testament, though no one was able to buy 
it until long after it was printed. We must go to Spain. Hard 
as it seems to day to believe it, there was then in Spain a great 
cardinal and a great scholar. His name was Francis Ximenes 
de Cisneros, and he was archbishop of Toledo. As early as 
the year 1502 he began to prepare in the university of Alcala, 



440 THE TEXT 

with the Latin name Complutum, an edition of the Bible which 
was to have in the Old Testament the Hebrew original and as 
well the Greek and Latin translations, and in the New Testa- 
ment the Greek original and the Latin translation. The volume 
containing the New Testament was the fifth volume, but it came 
out first. The editors were James Lopez de Stunica or Astuniga, 
Fernando Nunez de Guzman, Demetrius Ducas from Crete, and 
Antonio from Lebrija near Seville. They finished printing the 
New Testament on January ioth, 1514. The first four volumes, 
containing the Old Testament and the sixth volume with its 
lexicon, were finished by the ioth of July 15 17. Still, however, 
the volumes were not then published. In reference to the Old 
Testament it is interesting to observe that the editors betray in 
their preface by a very strong sentence a preparatory step to 
the egregious overestimation of the Latin text of the Bible 
uttered by the Council of Trent on April 8th, 1546. For, re- 
ferring to the fact that they had placed the Latin text in the 
middle and the Hebrew and Greek at the sides, they said that 
the Latin text was like Jesus between the two thieves. The 
Greek types used in the New Testament volume were singular, 
very thick and stiff, straight up and down. Instead of the usual 
Greek accents, the editors merely placed an acute accent on the 
syllable accented. The monosyllables had no accent at all. 
There were no spiritus. The other volumes had the usual Greek 
letters with accents and spiritus. Now these six volumes were all 
done by the year 15 17. The pope's, Leo x.'s, approval was not 
received until March 22nd, 1520, and we can find no traces of the 
books being in the hands of scholars before the year 1522. There 
were five short notes in the New Testament, one in Matthew, 
three in First Corinthians, and one in 1 John 5 7 - 8 . This last 
passage was taken from the Vulgate. The Greek text was of a 
late description ; it was the ordinary continuation of the written 
tradition. Our information about the Complutensian edition is 
meagre. We are much better acquainted with the rival edition 
made by Erasmus. 

Erasmus. 

Erasmus began to print his edition on the nth of September 
1515, and it was done by the 1st of March 151 6. Froben, the 



PRINTED EDITIONS— ERASMUS AND ESTIENNE 44 1 

printer and publisher, had heard of the Alcala edition, and was 
anxious to get his edition out ahead of it. He was successful 
enough in this effort, for Erasmus did not get sight of a copy of 
that other New Testament until after his own third edition of the 
year 1522 was done. It was not strange that such a hasty edition 
as Erasmus' first edition was, should have many faults. Erasmus 
praised his own edition in a letter to the pope, but he elsewhere 
conceded that it " was done headlong rather than edited." The 
manuscripts which he followed most closely were younger ones. 
As for the Revelation, Erasmus had but one mutilated manu- 
script, and he supplied what was lacking by translating the words 
from the Vulgate into his imperfect Greek. In one verse, if 
we may refer to a special one, he omits the article six times, 
where it should stand. The second edition, of the year 15 19, 
contains Leo x.'s approving letter of September 10th, 15 18. 
The third edition was issued in the year 1522, and it was this 
edition that, alas ! brought the baleful verse 1 John 5 7 - 8 out 
of that worthless manuscript at Dublin. The fourth edition of 
the year 1527 contained not only the Greek text with Erasmus' 
translation, but also the text of the Vulgate, which the fifth 
edition of the year 1535 again laid aside. 



Estienne Stephens, Beza. 

There was a family of printers at Paris and later at Geneva 
that exercised much influence in theological literature. Robert 
Estienne (to be pronounced etienne), the son of Henri Estienne 
the First, published in the year 1546, in two tiny volumes, a 
Greek New Testament. His son, Henri Estienne the Second, 
helped him. The text was chiefly taken from the fifth edition 
of Erasmus of the year 1535, although Estienne also used the 
Alcala edition. In the year 1549 he published a second edition, 
scarcely differing from the first. The year 1550 saw the publica- 
tion of Robert Estienne's, Stephens', large edition, named the 
Regia. This was the first edition with a critical apparatus, for 
the son Henri compared for his father fifteen manuscripts and 
the Alcala edition, and the readings were placed on the margin. 
This fine edition is in general the source of the so-called Textus 
Receptus for England. In the following year Robert Estienne 



442 THE TEXT 

printed his last edition of the Greek text of the New Testament. 
This was again a small edition in two volumes, and appeared at 
Geneva, not at Paris. In some copies the year was printed by 
mistake MDXLI instead of MDLI. It is extremely rare. The 
great peculiarity of this edition is that it contains for the first 
time our verse division. 

The next editor whom we have to name is again a French- 
man, Theodore de Beze, Calvin's successor at Geneva, to 
whom we alluded when speaking of the Codex Bezae and 
the Codex Claromontanus which belonged to him. His four 
large-sized editions of the text of the New Testament were pub- 
lished at Geneva, the first three by the Estienne Press, the fourth 
by the "heirs of Eustathe Yignon." With the Greek text Beze 
published also his annotations. These he had published before 
in a volume with the Vulgate New Testament, the third volume 
of a Latin Bible that Robert Stephens issued in 1557. On the 
title-page, therefore, of the Greek New Testament of 1565, his 
own first Greek edition, he very properly said that the annotations 
appeared for the second time. In consequence of this, careless 
scholars have applied "second edition," "hac secunda vice," 
to his Greek text, and have caused confusion that lasted for 
years. Beze's Greek text was drawn from Estienne's fourth 
edition of the year 1551. His second edition is of the year 
1582, his third of the year 1588, or sometimes, in some copies, 
1589, and his fourth of the year 1598. Besides these large- 
sized folio editions which were normative, he published five 
small editions. 

The Polyglots. 

We have now reached the time of the great Polyglots. The 
Complutensian or Alcala Bible was indeed in a manner a 
polyglot, because it had not only the Greek and Latin text of 
the whole Bible, but also in the Old Testament the Hebrew 
text. But now we come to something more extensive. The 
first one appeared under the auspices of Philip 11. at Antwerp. 
The editor was Benedict Arias Montanus. In this polyglot we 
find the Greek text of the New Testament twice over. In the 
fifth volume we find the Syriac text of the New Testament in 
Syriac letters, then the Syriac text in Hebrew letters, then the 



PRINTED EDITIONS 443 

Latin translation of the Syriac text, and finally the Latin Vulgate 
and the Greek text. This Greek text agrees in the main with 
Robert Estienne's edition of the year 1550. In the sixth volume 
we again have the Greek text with an interlinear Latin translation 
by Montanus. This Greek text is much like the other. The 
volume is sometimes numbered seventh or eighth. The name 
by which this polyglot goes is the Antwerp polyglot or, after 
its printer Christopher Plantin, the Plantin polyglot. We shall 
mention at once the other two polyglots. The Paris polyglot 
contained the New Testament in the fifth of its huge volumes, 
the first part of which appeared in 1630, the second in 1633. 
It offers the Syrian text with a Latin translation, the Latin 
Vulgate, the Greek text taken from the Antwerp polyglot, and 
the Arabic text with a Latin translation. The London polyglot, 
often called Walton's polyglot after its editor Brian Walton, 
appeared in the year 1657. The New Testament is in the 
fifth volume, and appears in the Syrian text with a Latin 
translation, the Ethiopic text with a Latin translation, the 
Arabic text with a Latin translation, — the Gospels are also 
given in Persian with an Arabic translation, — the Greek text 
with Montanus' Latin translation between the lines, and the 
Vulgate Latin text. The Greek text is from Estienne's edition 
of 1550. The sixth volume contained several collections of 
various readings, especially from Walton's hand and from James 
Ussher's. 

The Textus Receptus. 

Now we must go back to the end of the first quarter of the 
seventeenth century and the beginning of the second quarter, 
a time which exercised, critically speaking, a pernicious influence 
upon the progress of the determination of the Greek text of the 
New Testament, which fettered all research or all application of 
the results of research until far into the nineteenth century. It 
is a case of the wide influence of apparently trifling actions or 
words. The Elzevir publishers in Leiden and Amsterdam 
published in 1624 a neat little New Testament in Greek, taking 
the text chiefly from Beze's first edition of the year 1565. There 
was no harm in that. In the year 1633 tnev issued a second 
edition. They had corrected it as well as they knew how, 



444 THE TEXT 

doubtless helped by some unknown scholar as corrector, and 
this time they put into the preface a sentence, which they, of 
course, in their ignorance supposed to be true, yet which did 
not correspond to the facts. They wrote : " Therefore thou hast 
the text now received by all : in which we give nothing altered 
or corrupt" : "Textum ergo habes, nunc ab omnibus receptum : 
in quo nihil immutatum aut corruptum damus." 

These ignorant words are what did the mischief, and led to 
two centuries of trouble for textual critics. It was not the case 
that that was the text received by all, and much less w r as it 
the text that should have been received by all. But people, 
even many who should have known better, whose education 
should have enabled them to free themselves from the limitations 
of these publishers, clung to these words, busied themselves 
with the effort to prove them true, and denounced all who did 
not agree with them at least as blinded, but sometimes as 
traitors to the truth, destroyers of the New Testament, and it 
may be as totally immoral and detestable persons. These 
publishers issued further editions in the years 1641, 1656, 1662, 
1670, and 1678, but these have no further interest for us. 
The text which has been considered the Received Text by 
theologians of different places and different years has not always 
been one and the same. One general distinction to be mentioned 
is that between England and the Continent, inasmuch as the 
text of Estienne of the Regia edition of 1550 has for the most 
part prevailed in England, whereas on the Continent the text 
of Elzevir of the year 1624 has held the chief place. But then 
the handy editions of the British and Foreign Bible Society 
have done much to bring the English form into use in other 
countries. It is, however, to be kept in mind that in a large 
number of cases theologians have presupposed that the text 
which some chance wind had brought into their hands, and 
which was when exactly viewed neither Estienne 1550 nor 
Elzevir of any date, was the Received Text. The text had 
doubtless the qualification for such a juxtaposition in being of 
a late kind, and in not differing materially in its faults from 
the fancied but not existing commonly received text. 

A Geneva scholar, Etienne de Courcelles, who died at Amster- 
dam in 1659, had much insight into the condition of the text. 
He published in the Elzevir office at Amsterdam in the year 1658 



PRINTED EDITIONS— JOHN MILL 445 

a Greek New Testament that must be carefully kept separate 
from the Elzevir editions just mentioned. It is true that, as 
the necessities of that day demanded, he printed for the most 
part the Elzevir text of 1633 with but few variations. But he 
added a very learned preface and a great many various readings 
both from manuscripts and from earlier editions. He placed 
the heavenly witnesses, 1 Johns 7 - 8 , in a parenthesis. The reward 
of his labours were attacks made upon him as a favourer of 
Arianism. He intended to publish a large Greek and Latin 
edition with various readings, but he did not live to finish it. — 
In the year 1675, John Fell, who was afterwards bishop of 
Oxford, published a Greek New Testament, giving also the 
text of Elzevir 1633 and add<ng various readings from Courcelles 
and from the London polyglot and from twelve Oxford 
manuscripts. From friends he received further various readings 
from Dublin and from France, these out of Greek manuscripts, 
and then from the Gothic and the Boheiric translations, the 
latter of which was then still called simply Coptic. 



John Mill, Wells, Bentley, Mace 

Fell's mantle found worthy shoulders in John Mill, who began 
an imposing edition of the New Testament in Greek, and had 
reached in print the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew before 
Fell, who furthered the work, died. That was in the year 1686. 
Then he seems to have lost heart and to have let the book lie. 
Finally, he was in the year 1704 made a canon of Canterbury, 
and the Queen ordered him to finish his edition as soon as 
possible. It appeared in the year 1707, and Mill passed away. 
This was one of the great works of the theologians of the 
world, and would have done credit to Origen. He used Estienne's 
text of the year 1550, but he changed the readings in thirty-one 
passages. He gathered various readings from every accessible 
quarter. It would at that time have been totally impossible 
for him to make a text for himself. No one would have borne 
it. But in the preface, which was beyond praise, and in the 
notes under the text, he showed what he considered to be the 
right readings. Although he had, by retaining in general the 
accustomed text, made such concessions to the opinions of the 



446 THE TEXT 

common run of theologians, he was nevertheless attacked in the 
most violent manner; I say, he was attacked, but happily, as 
we have seen, he had gone to his reward ; his book was attacked. 
It was then republished in Amsterdam by Ludolf Kiister, but 
the age was so little inclined to studies of the kind that the sale 
hung fire. Again and again it was put forth with a new title-page. 
I think I have seen copies of Leipzig 1723 and Amsterdam 1746. 

Edward Wells, who died in the year 1727, published a Greek 
New Testament in ten parts between 1709 and 17 19, which was 
accompanied by an English translation and paraphrase as well as 
by critical and exegetical notes and various long essays. Unfor- 
tunately I have not yet seen this work. It w T as the first edition, 
after Beze's editions, that changed the text upon the basis of 
manuscripts. The great philologian Richard Bentley, w r ho died in 
1742, wrote to John Mill so early as 1691 about textual criticism. 
Later he determined to edit a Greek and Latin New Testament. 
For this purpose he collated himself and caused others, also 
Wettstein, and especially John Walker, to collate both Latin 
and Greek manuscripts. His intention was to constitute the 
text from the oldest manuscripts in the two languages. His 
propositions for such an edition were published, and were, of 
course, the object of the antagonism of the men who thought 
that the salvation of the Church lay in the undisturbed use of 
the Received Text. Bentley was not the man to be stopped 
by an attack of that kind. He liked fighting. We can apparently 
see that Walker was still collating for Bentley in the year 1732. 
But the edition never was published. The work grew upon 
him and he grew old. It is also very likely that he came to 
see that the harmony between the various Greek manuscripts 
and the Old-Latin manuscripts was not so close as he had 
supposed when he issued his propositions, and that this tended 
to retard the work itself or to lengthen the work itself, and as 
well to decrease his satisfaction in it. 

I have tried in vain to find out something about a 
Presbyterian clergyman named William or perhaps Daniel Mace, 
who is said to have been a member of Gresham College in 
London. In the year 1729 he published at London a New 
Testament in Greek and English in two volumes : " containing 
the original text corrected from the authority of the most 
authentic manuscripts." In many cases he has the readings 



PRINTED EDITIONS— BENGEL AND WETTSTEIN 447 

that the modern critics with their vastly enlarged critical 
apparatus have chosen. It was a most excellent work, and 
was, as a matter of course, violently denounced. If Scrivener 
had given due credit to Mace, he would not have needed to 
complain quite so much about the neglect of critical work in 
the department of the New Testament text at that time. 



Bengel. 

In the year 1734, Johannes Albert Bengel, who died in 1752, 
published a valuable edition of the Greek New Testament. As 
we have so often said of others, so we must say of Bengel, 
that he could not then publish a text of his own. Neither the 
publisher nor the public would have stood it. Bengel, however, 
was equal to the occasion. He only ventured, indeed, to put 
the good readings into the text when he could show that they 
already had appeared in some good edition. But he divided 
the various readings on the margin into five classes. The first 
class contained the genuine readings, and these, of course, should 
have been in the text and not on the margin. The second 
class contained the readings that were better than those in the 
text, and these should in like manner have been in the text 
instead of on the margin. The third class contained the readings 
that were just as good as those in the text. The fourth class 
contained the readings that were not so good as those in the 
text. And, finally, the fifth class consisted of readings that were 
to be rejected. In the book of Revelation he altered nineteen 
passages to suit the manuscripts. So many people railed at his 
edition that he published a " Defence of the Greek Testament " 
in German at the end of a harmony of the evangelists, and by 
itself in Latin at Leiden in 1737. A smaller edition offered 
only the text and the readings. 



Wettstein, Semler, Griesbach. 

Among those who did collation work for Bentley was Johann 
Jakob Wettstein, who was born at Basel in 1693 and died 
in 1754. As early as the year 17 13 he wrote a dissertation 



448 THE TEXT 

about the various readings in the New Testament. Then 
he visited various cities in Switzerland, France, and England. 
In the year 17 17 he was made deacon in Basel. Having pub- 
lished in 1 7 18 a specimen of his various readings, he was 
at once charged with favouring Socinianism. After a long 
battle he was put out of his office in 1730. About then he 
published a prefatory word to an edition of the Greek New 
Testament, in Amsterdam, in which city he had a professorship 
in the philosophical faculty in view. Having vanquished his 
antagonists in Basel in 1732, he became a professor at Amsterdam 
in 1733. His great edition of the New Testament in two 
volumes appeared at Amsterdam in 1751 and 1752. It contained 
also the letter of Clement of Rome and the homily of Pseudo- 
Clement, in Syriac and Latin, at the close of the second volume. 
Of course, he had to print a common text, and his text was in 
the main the Elzevir text. His critical apparatus was the first 
in which the uncial or large letter manuscripts were regularly 
denoted by capital letters and the minuscle or small letter 
manuscripts by Arabic numbers. This edition offered by far 
the largest critical apparatus for the text of the New Testament 
then existing. 

Johann Salomo Semler did not edit an edition of the New 
Testament, but he treated of the Greek manuscripts thereof in 
a most learned manner and at great length in the year 1765 
and later. The name of the book in which he discussed the 
manuscripts was Hermeneutical Preparation, and no one has 
apparently suspected the character of its contents. It may be 
that the readers of the title took it for an elementary book and 
passed it by. A pupil of Semler was destined to do great 
service, and to make for himself a name in this department. 
Johann Jakob Griesbach, who was born in "1745 and died in 
1812, published from 1774 until 1777 a Greek New Testament. 
The way of it was this. In the year 1774 he issued the three 
synoptic Gospels in their combination with each other. The 
Gospel according to John and the book of Acts followed in 
the year 1775, in which year the second volume with the 
Epistles and Revelation came out. And then in 1777 the 
synoptic Gospels were published at full length. This was a 
complicated way of preparing a copy of the New Testament. 
Griesbach continued to collate manuscripts and to examine 



PRINTED EDITIONS— HARWOOD 449 

and use the collations of others. After a number of years he 
published the first volume of a new edition in the year 1796 
and the second volume in 1806. The critical apparatus here 
was large, but not so large as Griesbach might have made it 
by drawing more fully upon the stores brought by his pre- 
decessors in collating and in editing. David Schulz began to 
make a new edition of Griesbach's New Testament in the year 
1827, but did not get beyond the first volume. If, however, we 
wish to have the ripe judgment of Griesbach, we should not take 
the larger edition of 1 796-1806, but the small edition of the year 
1805. To this small edition attaches, if I am not mistaken, a 
trifling literary interest in a curious way. Its text was, I under- 
stand, used in printing a large and beautiful edition in two fine 
quarto volumes, and for a half a century this edition was one 
of the favourite theological gifts in England, especially of wealthy 
parishioners to their clergymen. 



Edward Harwood, Matthai, Birch, Scholz. 

We mentioned a moment ago the Englishman Mace. Another 
Englishman, Edward Harwood, who was born in 1729 and 
died in 1794, was a Londoner and a theologian. He broke 
thoroughly out of the bands and bonds of tradition in pre- 
paring an edition of the Greek New Testament. A certain 
preparation for his work had been made by a learned printer 
in London, named William Bowyer. Johann Jakob Wettstein 
had not been permitted to print his own text, but had followed 
therein the Elzevir tradition, and placed below the text the 
readings which he thought to be the proper ones. The printer 
Bowyer was so liberal and so undertaking that he seized this 
opportunity to do a good work. He had already published 
Mill's edition four times, but Mill had also used a poorer text. 
Now Bowyer issued a two volume book which contained in 
the first volume the Greek New Testament almost always with 
the readings which Wettstein had declared to be the best ones. 
And the second volume was for that day still more daring, for 
it brought a collection of the conjectural readings that had been 
suggested for the text of the New Testament. 

Now Harwood went still further in his work. He knew nothing 
29 



450 THE TEXT 

of the future Codex Sinaiticus, and there were then no scholars 
to tell him how valuable the Codex Vaticanus was, and his keen 
discernment led him to turn to the Codex Bezae for the Gospels 
and for Acts, and to the Codex Claromontanus for the Pauline 
Epistles. Where these deserted him, he appealed chiefly to the 
Codex Alexandrinus. Eduard Reuss, who in the year 1891 died 
at Strassburg, where he had long worked, and who had pursued the 
most painstaking researches in the line of the printed text of the 
Greek New Testament, hit upon a good method for comparing the 
readings or the texts of the editions with each other. He picked 
out a thousand passages as normal passages and then collated the 
editions at those points. The freedom of Harwood's edition is 
plain when we learn that out of Reuss' thousand passages there 
are seven hundred and eleven, or more than seventy per cent, in 
which Harwood does not use the Elzevir text. Out of the 
thousand passages there are six hundred and forty-three in which 
Harwood agrees with Lachmann. Reuss counted Harwood's new 
readings, and did not name as new the ones which Griesbach at 
about the same time had preferred, and yet he found two 
hundred and three new readings, many of which are approved of 
by modern critics. That was a very good showing for the year 
1776, and was quite worthy of that year with its 4th of July on 
the other side of the sea. 

Alas ! the contemporaries of Harwood as well as of Mace 
and Bowyer did not appreciate the freedom that this edition 
placed before their eyes. Scrivener called Mace's work "un- 
worthy of serious notice " ; and his editor, referring to Bowyer 
and Harwood, says that Scrivener " looked for greater names." 
If Mace, and even the learned printer Bowyer, and Harwood 
had received from the clergy of their own day due respect, and 
if Scrivener and Burgon had appreciated and commended what 
these men did in those times that were so perilous for daring 
scientific work, the three names would be better known, and 
would attain at least to such greatness as various other names 
which Scrivener counted fit for approving notice. 

A Thuringian, Christian Friedrich Matthai, who was born in 
1744 and died in 181 1, and who held professorial chairs 
successively in Moscow, Meissen, and Wittenberg, a man of very 
keen parts, though, we regret to say, inaccurate in his views 
touching the inviolability of library possessions, did a great deal 



PRINTED EDITIONS— MATTHAI 451 

of very valuable collating of manuscripts of Church writers, in 
particular of Chrysostom, and of manuscripts of the New 
Testament. He published at Riga during the years T782 
to 1788 the New Testament in Greek and Latin in twelve 
volumes that are packed full of valuable material drawn from 
the manuscripts. A guide to the contents of these volumes 
would not be amiss, seeing that their arrangement is little less 
than chaotic. The Greek text is of no great importance, because 
it is drawn chiefly from young and inferior manuscripts. The 
Latin text is taken from the Demidow manuscript of the 
Vulgate. In a second edition, published in three volumes at 
Hof in 1803 and 1805 and at Ronneburg in 1807, he left out 
the Latin text, but used collations of several new manuscripts. 
It was much to be regretted that Matthai attacked some of his 
predecessors and contemporaries — for example, Semler and 
Griesbach — in a violent and, from the standpoint of courtesy, 
outrageous way. 

Denmark is like Weimar, a land devoted to art and science. 
In the second half of the eighteenth century it sent out a number 
of scholars to search in the libraries of Europe for manuscripts 
of the Greek New Testament and to collate them. The real 
leader was Andreas Birch, who was born in 1758 and died 
in 1829. He published in the year 1788 at Copenhagen the 
four Gospels in Greek from Estienne 1550, with various readings 
from Danish, Italian, Austrian, and Spanish libraries, and from 
three Syriac versions. The government and Birch intended to 
complete the New Testament in the same stately form, but a 
fire in the printing-office in the year 1795 destroyed a great many 
copies, and as well the paper and the types to be used for 
the edition. After this great loss the large edition was given up, 
and Birch published the various readings for the Acts and 
the Epistles in two small volumes, to which he also added one 
for the four Gospels. 

The Roman Catholic Church has thus far not taken an 
important part in the editing of the text of the New Testament, 
although the first editions that were printed were done before 
15 1 7. Johannes Martin Augustinus Scholz, a professor at Bonn, 
who was born in 1794 and died in 1852, was a very diligent 
worker in this department. He travelled in France and 
Switzerland and Italy and Palestine collating manuscripts most 



452 THE TEXT 

industriously, and then published at Leipzig in two volumes, in 
1830 and 1836, a Greek New Testament. His Greek text 
was modelled largely after that of Griesbach, especially in 
the second volume. His critical apparatus then gave his 
collations of the Greek manuscripts as well as some readings 
from the translations of the text, and from church writers. This 
collection of various readings was and is still to-day very 
important. The habit of decrying Scholz's carefulness in 
collation appears to me to be unjustifiable. I have repeatedly 
compared his collations with the originals, and found them to be 
very good. 

Carl Lachmann. 

We now come to a man who bears in one respect a certain 
resemblance to Bentley, in that he was a great philologian. 
Bentley was, however, also a theologian, as every professor at 
Cambridge and Oxford was of necessity until after the middle 
of the nineteenth century. I know of no previous connection 
between Carl Lachmann, of whom we now have to speak, 
and theology. He was a classical scholar of the highest rank, 
and as well one of the first German philologians, so that his 
edition of Lessing is still valuable. He began his work upon 
the New Testament by a small edition issued at Berlin in 
1 83 1. The putting forth of this little book was effected in 
the most unfortunate way. It was an unusual example of the 
way not to issue a book. Either Lachmann had not reflected 
carefully upon the possibilities of the reception of the book, 
or he had overrated the influence that his name upon the 
title-page would have as a commendation of the text offered, or 
he had underrated the conservative inclinations of theologians 
and the power that they could exert to hinder a judicial reception 
of his efforts. Be that as it may, he published the book in 
the following way. In the most important scientific theological 
quarterly for 1830, he published an article of about twenty-eight 
pages describing his edition. Now that was all very well. A 
number of thinking men will there have read his words, and 
have known what his intentions were. When the volume itself 
came out in 1831 it had no sign of a preface at 'the beginning. 
At the close of Revelation the reader found a few lines that said 



PRINTED EDITIONS— LACHMANN 453 

in effect this : (a) I have told of my plan in a more convenient 
place, namely, in that journal, (b) I have followed the custom 
of the oldest Eastern Churches, (c) Where that was uncertain 
I have laid weight upon the agreement of Italy and Africa. 
(d) Where all was uncertain, the margin says so. (e) Therefore 
I had no use for the Textus Receptus, but I now add its readings 
here. Accordingly the closing pages contained the readings 
of the Textus Receptus. 

That was not the way to publish a book. He could not 
compel everyone who bought his New Testament to go buy 
a copy of that number of that journal and cut out the twenty- 
eight pages as a preface to his book. The text differed from 
the commonly used texts, and it brought with it no adequate 
explanation of its reason for existence. Why should the theo- 
logians assume that this philologian, who had taken a fancy 
to make an excursion into their domains and to lay hands 
upon their sacred text, must necessarily have done so with 
very good judgment ? The probabilities were for them all 
upon the other side, and they said so, many of them in strong 
terms. And even the scholars who read that article in the 
journal were by no means all of them prepared to agree with 
him. To us to-day what he says is much more palatable, be- 
cause we stand at a very different point in the development 
of critical science. 

Lachmann did not give up his new line of work. In the 
years 1842 and 1850 he published in two volumes a large 
edition both of the Greek and of the Latin text of the New 
Testament. Philipp Buttmann, the son of the great Philipp 
Buttmann, attended to the Greek part of the critical apparatus. 
All the rest Lachmann did. The text was much the same as 
in the first, the small edition. One of the difficulties in the 
way of the reception of Lachmann's text was that from Lach- 
mann's point of view, as a matter of fact, it was neither in- 
tended for nor adapted to reception in the common use of 
that word, and in the way in which an edition of the New 
Testament was applied by the average owners thereof. Almost 
all the copies of the Greek New Testament that were sold were 
bought either by students of theology to be used in following 
the daily lectures, or by pastors to be used in preparing their 
sermons and their theological essays. Lachmann's edition was 



454 THE TEXT 

in itself, according to his express purpose, what we might call 
a scientific tool. It might perhaps be called a bridge that 
was to be thrown across the gap separating us from the true 
text. What the ordinary buyer of a Greek New Testament wanted, 
what the student needed for the current exercises of the university, 
the pastor for his daily work, was the true, real, good text, the 
very best text that was attainable. 

When, then, Lachmann said : " I am not yet trying to find 
the true reading, — which indeed is often still in existence in 
some single source, but just as often has been totally lost, — 
but only the oldest one among those that are evidently widely 
spread," — when Lachmann said that, he puzzled and displeased 
his buyers. So far as that was his purpose, Lachmann should 
have had a good friend who could have heard his plan and 
then said : " My dear Lachmann, that is a very fine plan. I 
do not doubt that you will finally succeed in making a very 
good text of the New Testament. But, as you say, you are 
not yet trying to get the true text. You are searching for 
a middle text w r hich will lead you over to the true text. 
Now, you must not publish this middle text. Nobody wants 
it. It is worth nothing to these people who buy the Greek 
New Testaments. Keep this middle text in your portfolio, 
and use it as well as you can to help you in the determina- 
tion of the true text. When you have found the true text, or 
when you have gotten as near to the true text as you can get, 
then publish that." That is the way in which a good friend 
might have saved Lachmann and his opponents much trouble. 
Lachmann thought that he could get back, for this present 
bridging purpose, at least as far as the last years of the fourth 
century, to the time at which Jerome revised the Latin text. 

After all, however, we must ask what Lachmann really did, 
or first of all, what he could do. The answer is, that the 
witnesses that he had in his hands were not numerous or com- 
plete enough, and not adapted to give him the text of the 
end of the fourth century. Fancy, for example, the wild im- 
propriety of using Origen as a witness for such a purpose. 
And the other auxiliary troops, Italy and Africa, were as little 
then to be used for the service for which Lachmann needed 
them. That is one thing : Lachmann could not do what he 
proposed to do. Strangely enough, I now have to state some- 



PRINTED EDITIONS— TISCHENDORF 455 

thing that seems to be directly opposed to much of what I 
have said of Lachmann's work. It is all right nevertheless. 
W hat we have just said aimed at Lachmann's plan and purpose. 
His plan was not the right one for a New Testament that was 
to be sold, and his plan was not possible of being carried out. 
And, in spite of all that, Lachmann's text, the text that he 
actually published, was a very good one, and was for that day 
very well fitted to be used not only by students but also by 
pastors. Lachmann was an exceptionally good philologian, and 
his skilful hands formed the good text in spite of him, so that 
instead of constituting a bridge he did much towards — what 
shall I say? — rebuilding or unearthing that which was on the 
farther side of the stream of forgetfulness across which the bridge 
was to be thrown. His art and his insight led him to determine 
a text which largely belongs to the second century, and modern 
criticism accepts a great many of the readings which he approved. 
Lachmann was better than he had in that article declared that 
he would be. His name will long be held in honour in textual 
criticism, even though neither he nor anyone else ever used 
his text as a means of passing on to the true text. 



CONSTANTIN TlSCHENDORF. 

It was above observed that a note of Lachmann's in that 
article in the journal of 1830 had given Tischendorf the idea 
of going to Paris and preparing editions of the Codex Ephraemi 
and of the Codex Claromontanus. In that way Tischendorf 
really owed his first manuscript work to Lachmann's indirect 
advice, to the words that Lachmann addressed to the scholars 
at Paris. This circumstance might have led to an attachment 
between the two that would certainly have been an advantage 
to the younger man. But a quick word of Lachmann's barred 
any such connection, and excited in Tischendorf bitter feelings 
that only passed away after a long series of years. The 
way of it was this. Tischendorf finished at the beginning of 
October in the year 1840 a small edition of the New Testament 
dated 1841, and, habilitating at once as privatdozent at Leipzig, 
started off on that journey to Paris. His New Testament, which 
was provided with a fairly large critical apparatus, was kindly 



45 6 THE TEXT 

received in general, and David Schulz, the professor at Breslau, 
who had published one volume of a renewed edition of Griesbach's 
Greek New Testament, was particularly friendly. 

Lachmann, on the contrary, took an unfavourable view of 
Tischendorfs youthful efforts, and apparently did not suspect in 
the least that the young editor had set out to do much and 
good work in this line. Accordingly, in the preface to the first 
volume of his large edition, which appeared while Tischendorf 
was still working in the libraries of the West, Lachmann dis- 
posed of Tischendorfs New Testament with the curt remark : 
" For that edition, if the truth is to be spoken, is from cover 
to cover a mistake" — "tota peccatum est." It will be conceded 
by everyone that those words were not calculated to awaken 
agreeable feelings in Tischendorfs mind. He returned the com- 
pliment, as was quite natural, by writing some very sharp things 
about Lachmann's edition, especially laying stress upon the fact, 
which was undeniable, that Lachmann did not carry out his own 
principles with any accuracy. I am glad to say that before 
his death he came to feel and write more kindly with respect to 
Lachmann's merits. 

In that very year, 1842, Tischendorf, who was at Paris, made 
an edition that I really think was a total mistake, and Lach- 
mann's words, if they had been aimed at the edition I now have 
in view, would have hit the nail on the head. At Paris, Tischen- 
dorf published in a French publishing house a Greek text of 
the New Testament which corresponded in the main to his 
Greek text at Leipzig dated a year earlier. No one could object 
to that, if his Leipzig publisher did not. It was dedicated to the 
well-known scholar and statesman Francois Pierre Guillaume 
Guizot. That was an edition that did no harm. Probably, as 
the result of some scientific conversations with Roman Catholic 
clergymen at Paris, the plan was formed of constructing a Greek 
text which should correspond so far as possible to the Latin text 
of the Vulgate. Following that plan, Tischendorf published such 
an edition and dedicated it to the archbishop of Paris, Denis 
Auguste Affrey. Now, it seems to me that that was a mistake. 
Tischendorf was bent on doing good scientific work, on finding 
out as well as he could, by going back to the earliest attainable 
period, what was the best text of the New Testament. He should 
therefore not have put his name on a book of this kind. The 



PRINTED EDITIONS— TISCHENDORF 457 

thing had an almost ludicrous issue. Tischendorf was forced to 
say on the title-page that he had taken advantage of the help of 
a Roman Catholic clergyman named Jager. It was not very long 
before Tischendorf s name was remanded to the second place on 
the title-page, and Jager took the credit of the edition to himself. 
I wish he had had it from the first. Happily, that edition was 
only a parenthesis in Tischendorf s scientific work. 

The three editions thus far named were not numbered, but 
when Tischendorf seventeen years later came to numbering his 
large editions he regarded these three as the first, second, and 
third in the order in which I have spoken of them. No 
one of these editions was of great importance. The next edition 
was an important one. It is the one which he afterwards 
counted as the fourth. It was published at Leipzig in the year 
1849, and named on the title-page as the second Leipzig edition. 
The preface filled sixty-nine pages, and the critical apparatus 
was a very full one. In the following year, 1850, Tischendorf 
published a handy edition of the text in the Bernhard Tauch- 
nitz publishing-house, afterwards called the fifth edition. This 
was issued not only alone, but also in union with the Hebrew 
Old Testament of Theile. It contained almost exactly the same 
text as the edition of 1849, and had the Elzevir readings below 
the text. It was reprinted in the year 1862 with the same 
text but with a new preface, and in the year 1873 the text of 
the eighth great edition was inserted in it and the readings of 
the Sinaitic manuscript. Oskar von Gebhardt took up this 
edition and corrected it with his scrupulous care, adding in a 
larger form the readings of Tregelles and of Westcott and Hort, 
and in a smaller form those of Westcott and Hort alone. In 
the larger form he also combined it with Luther's German 
text. The edition that Tischendorf afterwards counted as the 
sixth was one that he published at first as a triglot with 
a Latin and a German text in the year 1854, and then alone 
in the year 1855. This became the favourite edition for 
students, and was called the "academic" edition. In the 
year 1873 the text of the eighth great edition was inserted 
in it. These editions of the years 1850 and 1854 were of no 
moment for the development of textual criticism, save in so far 
as they contributed to spread the text which the edition of 
1849 had determined, and at a later period the text of the 



458 THE TEXT 

eighth edition. The edition of the four Gospels in the form of a 
synoptical or combined text which was issued in 185 1 need not be 
described at length. Tischendorf had done much for the spread 
of the Greek New Testament, having published before he came 
to the seventh edition more than fifteen thousand copies of it. 

In the year 1859 his first very large edition appeared, and 
that with the name "The seventh larger critical edition," while a 
smaller form with a much shortened critical apparatus was called 
"The seventh smaller critical edition." It must be kept in mind 
that Tischendorf at that time had neither the Codex Sinaiticus 
nor the more exact readings of the Codex Vaticanus. In the 
earlier part of the text, in the four Gospels he seems to have 
doubted whether he had done right to follow, to such an extent 
as he had done in the year 1849, tne s0 scantily supported ancient 
text. The Gospels, therefore, in this seventh edition, show a 
closer affinity to the so-called Received Text than they did in the 
fourth edition of the year 1849. But in the Epistles it is clear 
that the ancient text had regained its supremacy in his mind, and 
they are further removed from the Received Text than they had 
been in the year 1849. The fact that this seventh edition in the 
Gospels agreed to so great an extent with the Received Text 
caused it to be much sought in England. Long after the issue 
of the eighth edition many British theologians clung tenaciously 
to the seventh. This seventh edition brought out the fullest 
critical apparatus that had ever been printed. The prolegomena 
bore no proportion to the text and to the apparatus. A slight 
comparison shows that they were for the most part merely taken 
over from the edition of 1849, which was much more limited in 
its scope. Bentley's proposals were evidently inserted to fill up 
the pages. The fact was that at the close of the printing of the 
text, at which point of time Tischendorf should have properly 
had at least a year free for the preparation of the prolegomena, 
he received from the Emperor of Russia the desired pecuniary 
and moral support necessary for a new journey to Mount Sinai. 
Under such circumstances it was not strange that he simply 
reprinted the no longer sufficient prolegomena of the fourth 
edition, with trifling alterations and additions, and hurried away 
to the East. 

The eighth larger critical edition was published, the Gospels 
in 1864 and the rest of the text in 1872. For this edition 



PRINTED EDITIONS — TISCHENDORF 459 

Teschendorf had received a strong impulse towards the ancient 
text. He had found and edited the Codex Sinaiticus, and had 
secured much more accurate and full knowledge of the text of the 
Codex Vaticanus, to say nothing of less important witnesses. He 
felt that he was now fully justified in returning to his earlier pre- 
dilections, and he declared openly his substantial agreement with 
the principles of Bentley and Lachmann and his conviction that 
it was necessary : " to turn away entirely from the text that 
tradition has placed in our hands, from the Byzantine text which 
has been unconditionally preferred since the time of Erasmus, 
and instead of that to constitute the text of the second century 
as it is witnessed to by the documents, with all possible putting 
aside of one's own opinion." Thus the text of this eighth edition 
departed still more widely from the Received Text. It has been 
complained that Tischendorf paid in this edition far too great 
respect to the text of the Codex Sinaiticus. If anyone turns to 
the years 1859 to 1863, during which Tischendorf was busy 
publishing two editions of this manuscript, and during which his 
eyes and mind were to such a great extent bent upon the text of 
this manuscript, the high character of which can only be doubted 
by those who are not acquainted with it, — if anyone consider 
these circumstances it will, I think, be plain to him that 
Tischendorf must have been, would have had to be, more than 
human not to feel a special liking for this text found by him and 
thus almost learned by heart. And nevertheless it is not the 
case that he follows this manuscript blindly. He has, on the 
contrary, often not followed its first hand, and that in places in 
which others would have followed it. There should, moreover, 
be a further word added in justice to Tischendorf. He was 
always ready to learn, always ready to ask to have the faults of 
previous publications corrected, always ready to consider testimony 
judicially. It will be remembered that he was struck with palsy 
soon after the publication of the second volume of this edition, 
and passed away a little over a year later without having been 
able to resume work. For myself, I do not doubt in the least 
that if Tischendorf had lived a few years longer he would himself 
have changed some of the readings of which complaint has been 
made. I have perhaps said more about Tischendorf than the 
plan of this book would warrant, but I feel sure that many will 
wish to have this information about him. 



460 THE TEXT 



Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, Scrivener. 

England has a special interest in the next editor whom we have 
to mention, Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, whose life and works show 
what can be effected under all manner of untoward circumstances, 
in spite of poverty, opposition, obloquy, and ill-health, if a man 
has an iron will and feels sure that God is backing him. He 
was born in 1813, two years before Tischendorf, and died a year 
later than he, in 1875, so tnat tne tw0 were strictly contemporaries. 
But their lives were only alike in the years that they covered and 
in the kind of work that they did. All else was different. 
Tischendorf lived and worked in the sunshine of good fortune, 
success, and praise. Tregelles lived and worked under a cloud 
of difficulties, reviled and hindered, and when at the last his work 
began to receive the long merited acknowledgment his health 
was so much shattered that he could not finish his one great 
edition. 

Tregelles should have somewhere in England a monument as 
rare as his devotion to the New Testament was. He it was who 
almost alone in England fought for the displacement of the 
Received Text. Before his death, Alford and Westcott and 
Hort took up the battle. It is in a scientific way interesting to 
observe that Tischendorf seems to have in some cases delayed 
his parts of the eighth edition until he could see the correspond- 
ing part of Tregelles' New Testament. Tregelles published in 
1844 the Revelation in Greek with a new English translation and 
with various readings, he having determined the text according 
to ancient authorities. Four years later he published his pro- 
posals for an edition of the New Testament in Greek and Latin, 
the Greek text to be drawn from ancient authorities, the Latin 
text of Jerome from the Codex Amiatinus. The text with the 
critical apparatus came out in six parts between 1857 and 1872. 
In the meantime, however, a stroke of paralysis had in the year 
1861 impeded his work, a second stroke following in the year 
1870. B. W. Newton helped him with the Revelation, and 
A. W. Streane published select passages from his previous works 
as a preface, and copious additions to the critical apparatus. In 
j reparing this edition Tregelles had worked enormously, visiting 
the continent three times and collating numerous manuscripts in 



PRINTED EDITIONS— TREGELLES 46 1 

various languages, Greek, Latin, and Syriac. He also published 
the Codex Zacynthius in 1861, and wrote two most excellent 
books about the text, one of which formed the fourth volume 
of Home's Introduction in the tenth edition in 1856, and the 
eleventh in 1863, — the other was An Account of the Printed 
Text which appeared in 1854. He was not only industrious, but 
also accurate and careful. His judgment was sound. Unfortun- 
ately his text of the Gospels was completed before the Codex 
Sinaiticus was published, and before the Codex Vaticanus was 
better known. Had this not been the case he would certainly in 
his text have agreed to a still greater extent with the eighth edition 
of Tischendorf. This circumstance, and the further consideration 
that the latter part of his work was often less accurate than it 
would have been had he been well, deprive his text as text of a 
permanent value. He would at the time of his death have read 
the text differently in a multitude of passages. That, however, 
should not diminish the gratitude of theologians towards him for 
his faithful labours. 

Henry Alford published at London in the years 1849 to I ^6i 
a Greek New Testament in four volumes, with some various 
readings and with a commentary. It was his purpose at first, 
when he issued the Gospels in 1849, only to set forth a text 
for the moment, but he gave up that thought in the second 
volume which came out in the year 1852. Now and then he 
made himself, or he obtained from friends, new collations of 
manuscripts. His text is nearer to that of Tregelles than to 
Tischendorf s. 

Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener, teacher and clergyman 
in Cornwall, and then vicar of Hendon near London, published 
Estienne's text again and again from the year 1859 onwards 
in handy volumes with readings from Elzevir {not from Beza), 
Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Tregelles. I say: not from Beza. 
What he called Beza's New Testament was clearly something 
else, but something that he later could tell nothing about. He 
said to me personally that he wished that he had never seen the 
book. He also published in 1881 the Greek text used by the 
English revisers of 161 1, with the readings which commended 
themselves to the revisers of 1881. His Plain Introduction to 
the Criticism of the New Testament in four editions, from 1861 
to 1894, was the English handbook of textual criticism. In 



462 THE TEXT 

the year 1859 he published the Codex Augiensis. He also 
published the Codex Bezae in 1864. In the same year he 
issued a collation of the Codex Sinaiticus, and in 1875 Six 
Lectures on the Text of the New Testament. But his great 
industry was turned largely to the collation of manuscripts. The 
collation of twenty came out in 1853, and fifty more appeared 
in the edition of the Codex Augiensis. A few further collations 
appeared in Adversaria Critica Sacra, issued two years after his 
death, but as if he still were alive ; it should have remained in 
manuscript. Scrivener came to see before he passed away that 
the Received Text could not be supported so unconditionally as 
he had once thought. But he expressed himself less distinctly 
in public, moved, I think, largely by a kind consideration for his 
friend and staunch adherent John William Burgon, whose devotion 
to that text scarcely knew any bounds. Burgon did a great deal 
of work in searching out manuscripts, and he published a very 
learned treatise upon the closing verses attached to the Gospel of 
Mark. It was a pity that he only published his notes about 
manuscripts in The Guardian newspaper. Would that more of 
the clergy could be induced to work as Scrivener and Burgon 
worked in furthering the text of the New Testament. 

Thomas Sheldon Green, once a fellow of Christ's College at 
Cambridge, was of a liberal mind. He published a Course of 
Developed Criticism in 1856, treating more than two hundred 
passages in a very judicious manner. The Twofold New Testa- 
ment appeared in 1865 and its Appendix about 187 1. William 
Kelley published the Greek text of Revelation with a new 
English translation and with a critical apparatus in i860. It is 
interesting to find that John Brown McClellan, who published in 
1875 the first volume of a new English translation of the New 
Testament from a new Greek text, regarded the Codex Sinaiticus 
and the Codex Vaticanus as very bad manuscripts. In America 
one of the men who occupied himself most intensely with the 
Greek text of the New Testament was Ezra Abbot, but he 
expended his efforts largely upon the books and essays of 
other people, and published only a few short essays himself. 
It was he who was the chief representative of textual criticism 
in the New Testament Company of Revisers in America in 
the years 1872-1881. 



PRINTED EDITIONS— WESTCOTT AND HORT 463 



Westcott and Hort. 

Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, both 
members of the University of Cambridge, Westcott later bishop 
of Durham, did more than anyone else ever did to place the 
history of the text of the New Testament on a sound basis. 
Hort passed away in 1892, and Westcott in 1901. Westcott 
published a book introductory to the study of the Gospels in 185 1, 
and a book upon the canon of the New Testament that will long 
remain standards. For twenty-eight years they worked together 
upon an edition of the New Testament. With an openness and 
a modesty which has seldom or never been equalled they sent 
out their edition in a preliminary form in parts, in the years 1871 
to 1876, to a number of scholars asking for comments. Finally, 
in the year 1881 they published their work in two volumes, one 
containing the text, the other the introduction. In the text they 
agree to a large extent with Tregelles and with Tischendorf. The 
text of Tregelles would have been much nearer theirs if Tregelles 
had had the readings of the Sinaiticus and of the Vaticanus for 
the Gospels. And their nearness to Tischendorf would have 
been clearer if Tischendorf had in some way indicated the 
readings which were almost as good as the ones which he 
actually put in the text, or, we may say, if he had explained to 
us how the case stood in such passages as he was scarcely able 
to settle with satisfaction, and in which he therefore took one of 
the readings, seeing that he could not take two at once, and let 
the other one go. Westcott and Hort give such readings in their 
margin. Had Tischendorf done likewise we should have seen 
more distinctly how near the two editions are to each other. 
These editors hesitated to place in a popular edition readings 
that were not found in witnesses to the text, but that proceeded 
alone from conjecture. They insisted, however, rightly upon the 
necessity of conjecture, and pointed out in their edition the 
places which in their judgment allowed of no solution by refer- 
ence to the manuscripts and other sources, and which therefore 
demanded conjectural emendation. It is not necessary for me 
to say here what Westcott and Hort thought about the history of 
the text, seeing that I have good sense enough for the present to 
accept their conclusions and to work upon them until something 



464 THE TEXT 

better comes, and that I shall therefore give their views essentially 
when I later give my own. Thus far the larger part of the 
objections made to their conclusions may be found in their own 
book. 

Bernhard Weiss, of Berlin, who has for more than half a 
century been studying the New Testament and publishing works 
upon its different parts, viewing it from various standpoints, has 
in many of these works, in the commentaries and in the dis- 
cussions of synoptical questions in particular, treated of textual 
questions. During all the years he continually busied himself 
with the text. Finally, in the years 1893 to 1900 he published 
Researches in Textual Criticism, with the determination of the 
text, and in the year 1902 the text was again issued in another 
form with a short commentary. It has often been said that the 
critics of the text would in certain cases have settled upon other 
readings than those chosen by them if they had been exegetes. 
It may be a question how far the exegete should dominate the 
critic of the text, even when they are combined in one person. 
But in any case it is of exceedingly great value that a scholar 
who has for years been commenting upon the text of the New 
Testament should give us his mature views as to the determina- 
tion of the true text thereof. 

Eberhard Nestle, of Maulbronn, who published an interesting 
Introduction to the Greek New Testament in 1897, has done 
something incredible in the field of the textual criticism of the 
New Testament. The British and Foreign Bible Society has 
for years held with the utmost tenacity to the Received Text of 
the New Testament. It did finally allow Franz Delitzsch some 
years ago, in his Hebrew New Testament, to encroach upon the 
Received Text, but that was in Hebrew and was little noticed. 
Years and years ago I planned an appeal to that society to urge 
upon it a timely change. But I never sent it off. So far 
as I can remember, everyone to whom I then mentioned it 
considered the case hopeless. It was desirable for the cause 
of the Bible, of the Church, and of science that the great 
apparatus of that society should cease to deluge Europe with 
this imperfect text. Nestle has effected the change. He, with 
the self-denying help especially of Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel, of 
Zurich, published in Stuttgart an edition of the Greek New 
Testament in the year 1898, and he won the British and Foreign 



PRINTED EDITIONS 465 

Bible Society over to take this edition into its own hands. I do 
not like the way in which he decides upon the text in his edition, 
but that is a matter of little moment compared with the successful 
breaking of the dominion of the Received Text. The plan that 
I wished to suggest to the society was to have as soon as feasible 
the best possible text prepared, and to name that text on the title- 
page the text of — say 1905 or 19 10, or whatever the year may be 
— and to keep to that text with that year on the title-page, of 
course on the upper part of the page, because the year of 
publication must be in its usual place below, until it was clear 
that new discoveries or new researches made a change in the 
text desirable. Then the new text should have been put in as 
the text of the new year and again retained till a change became 
necessary. In this way the society and the world would have 
the state of the text before its eyes, and would have the necessity 
of occasional change in mind. I need not say that there is no 
reason to suppose that changes of importance would frequently 
have to be made after the determination of a good text at the 
beginning. A see-saw hither and thither at the beck of every 
edition does not seem to me to be in any wise proper. But I 
am deeply thankful to Nestle for his deed. 

The latest work in textual criticism is that which is in process 
of issue at the hands of Hermann von Soden in Berlin, who by 
the laudable great heartedness of Fraulein Elise Koenigs was 
enabled to send out a number of scholars to examine manu- 
scripts in various libraries. The material gathered together must 
be immense. Thus far two large volumes of discussions have 
appeared, containing also a list of the Greek manuscripts. What 
the text will be no one yet knows. The author's prospectus 
showed that he either had not read or had not — appreciated — 
what Tischendorf and what Westcott and Hort had written about 
their texts. The conclusion or the probability would seem to 
be, that if the fairly intelligible statements of two contemporary 
or nearly contemporary scholars of the nineteenth century proved 
so impossible of comprehension as to be misstated by two 
centuries in the proclamation of the merits of the coming 
edition, the difficult entanglements of textual tradition in the 
first, second, third, and fourth centuries would in the end 
scarcely prove to the editor so clear as they seemed to him at 
the first blush to be. Everyone is awaiting the issue with great 



466 THE TEXT 

interest. In the meantime all are astounded at the unbounded 
working power of the author. Those who are acquainted with 
the text of the New Testament, or at least many of them, regret 
that much of the energy of the editor thus far has been expended 
in operating with the story of the adulteress in John 7 53 -8 n , 
seeing that the history, the fortunes, and the vicissitudes of these 
verses, which have only the most frail connection with the text 
of the New Testament, cannot in any wise offer a norm or an 
example for the history of the text proper. It is like arguing as 
to the growth of the oak from the consideration of a twig of 
mistletoe. May the author and editor reach an end and a 
clearness and a certainty as to the difficult problems of textual 
history far beyond what his present words lead textual critics to 
look for, and somewhere near what his extraordinary labours 
deserve. 



46; 



IX. 

THE EXTERNALS OF THE TEXT 

If we could suppose ourselves appointed as a committee to 
print for the first time the books of our New Testament, one 
of the questions that would meet us might be the general title. 
That would be the very tip end of the beginning of textual 
criticism, in criticising the external addition to the text which 
stands at the greatest distance from it. In Exodus 24 7 we find 
"the book of the covenant," which can then have been but a 
very short book indeed. By the time we reach 2 Kings 2 3 2,3 
"the book of the covenant" will have been much larger. At 
that day the Israelites might well have spoken of the book of the 
Old Covenant, of the covenant from ancient centuries. When 
Jesus preached and when the apostles went out to the world 
with His message to men, it was quite natural that the thought of 
a New Covenant should arise, as in Hebrews 9 15 . The Greek 
word for covenant, htaBrjKr], meant also "testament." The 
Latin lawyer of Carthage called such a legal document an 
" instrument," using his technical word. In the early Church the 
Christians gradually came to transfer the name of the covenant 
to the book which told of the covenant. And with the other 
word they spoke of the Old Testament and of the New 
Testament. In the New Testament the first part consisted of 
"the Gospels" or "the Gospel Instrument," and the latter part 
of " the Apostle " or " the Apostolic Instrument." 



Order of Books. 

The order in which we place the books of the New Testament 
is not a matter of indifference. Every Christian should be 
familiar with these books, and should know precisely where to 
find each book. Every New Testament should have the books 
in precisely the same order, the order of the Greek Church, 



468 THE TEXT 

which in this case is of right the guardian of this ancient literature. 
The proper order is, I think : First, the Four Gospels : Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John. Second, the Book of Acts. Third, the 
Catholic Epistles : James, First and Second Peter, First, Second, 
and Third John, and Jude. Fourth, the Epistles of Paul : 
Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, 
Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Thessalonians, 
Hebrews, First and Second Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. 
And fifth, the book of Revelation. The order of the four 
Gospels to which we are used is by far the prevailing order. 
Sometimes, however, especially in connection with a Latin 
tradition, we find the order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark. This 
order seems to proceed from the wish to give the two apostles 
the leading place, and then to give the larger Gospel according 
to Luke the preference before Mark. That last order of Luke 
and Mark would point to the early period at which Paul, and 
therefore his companion Luke, were especially cherished. The 
reason given in a Latin manuscript for having John after Matthew 
is found in the closing perfection of his book. Druthmar of the 
ninth century offers a reason for each way of arranging the 
Gospels. The usual order places, according to him, one apostle 
at the beginning and the other at the end, so that the two non- 
apostles in between them may take their authority from the two 
apostles who encase them. And as for the two apostles in 
front, he asked Euphemius, a Greek, why they were put there, 
and he replied, " Like a good farmer who yokes his best oxen in 
front." Once or twice the order John, Matthew, Luke, Mark 
occurs. That looks as if it might have been taken from the 
books of Gospel lessons, with John at Easter, Matthew at 
Whitsuntide, Luke at Michaelmas, and Mark in Lent. 

The current order of the Catholic Epistles is the usual one in 
the ancient Church. Occasionally, however, we find a different 
order. Most frequently the change has been made to place 
Peter in front, and then the order of the other three varies 
according to the fancy of the scribe. We have Peter, James, 
John, Jude ; and Peter, James, Jude, John ; and Peter, John, Jude, 
James j and Peter, John, James, Jude ; and Peter, Jude, James, 
John. 

In the Epistles of Paul, with which the Epistle to the 
Hebrews is closely united, the place of precisely this Epistle is 



THE EXTERNALS OF THE TEXT 469 

almost the only thing that varies. The Greek order is that which 
places the Epistle to the Hebrews between Thessalonians and 
Timothy, and that is the order to which we should hold. The 
Latin order places Hebrews after Philemon. It would, of course, 
be a satisfaction to us, in our firm conviction that the Epistle is 
not from Paul, to put it after his Epistles. But we must keep to 
the old order or we shall have the New Testament turned upside 
down in connection with every fancied discovery as to authorship 
and date of books. 

Chapters. 

When we approach the single books we meet the question as 
to the division into chapters. We do not know who determined 
the large chapters found in the Greek manuscripts, but the very 
lack of remarks about them leads to the supposition that they 
were the work of an early age. These larger chapters in the 
Gospels are of an altogether phenomenal oneness and steadfast- 
ness. There are 68 in Matthew, 48 in Mark, 83 in Luke, and 18 
in John. They may be left out in a manuscript, especially if the 
manuscript be intended rather for liturgical use, for then it is 
desirable that there shall be no divisions and no headings to 
catch the eye save those that are strictly needed for the lessons 
to be read. In general the number of the chapter is put in the 
margin opposite the beginning of the chapter, where also a 
larger, perhaps a coloured, letter may be found. Then the 
inscription giving the contents of the chapter is placed in the 
upper or in the lower margin. These inscriptions usually begin 
with the word " about " or " concerning," — for example, the second 
chapter in Matthew is " About the children who were murdered," 
rrepl tCjv avaipeOivTOiv 7rcu8tW. We can see at once that these 
chapters have their textual character, when I observe that this 
very chapter has three main readings ; for we may find instead of 
7rcuS<W the word Tra&oiv or the word vrprtuv, and I have also 
seen /3pi<p<av. These chapters are of very different lengths. 
Take, for example, two chapters in Matthew. Chapter 55 
contains a dozen lines only, and chapter 56 over ninety. 



470 THE TEXT 



Eusebius' Harmony of Gospels. 

The Jews were in the habit of comparing scripture with 
scripture, and the Christians who found in their four Gospels four 
accounts of Jesus as a teacher were forced to compare these 
accounts with each other and to note their agreement or their 
failure to agree with each other. Ammonius tried to write the 
parallel sections alongside of each other. Eusebius invented a 
better plan. He left the four Gospels each in its own proper 
shape. But he proceeded to mark off in each certain sections 
or, as they were called, chapters. The reason for the length of 
the chapters was found in the relation of the four Gospels to 
each other. Let us suppose, for example, that we are reading a 
verse which is found alike in all four Gospels. Now, the 
" chapter " in which that verse is will continue until something 
comes up that is not in all four Gospels. Should the new 
" chapter " happen to contain material found alone in the Gospel 
in question, very good, this "chapter" will continue just so 
long as the words are found nowhere else. The moment that 
something occurs that is found, let us say, in two Gospels, in this 
one and any other one, there that " chapter " stops and a new 
one begins. In this way Eusebius divided up sections or little 
chapters in all four Gospels, making in Matthew 355, in Mark 
233, in Luke 342, and in John 232. Some are very short, once 
there are three in a single one of our verses. And some are 
very long, especially the sections in John which have no parallel. 
This division is the basis of the work of Eusebius. 

Then he prepared lists, canons, of the various possible or 
actual combinations of these chapters, and thus of the Gospels 
with each other. There were ten of them. The first list con- 
tained the numbers of the sections in which all four Gospels 
agreed with each other. The second list or canon gave the 
numbers of the sections in which Matthew, Mark, and Luke 
coincided with each other. The third canon offered the sections 
in which Matthew, Luke, and John agreed. The fourth canon 
has the sections in which Matthew, Mark, and John go together. 
The fifth canon is occupied by the sections in which only Matthew 
and Luke agree. The sixth canon is devoted to the sections in 
which Matthew and Mark are alike. The seventh canon shows 



THE EXTERNALS OF THE TEXT 47 1 

in which sections Matthew and John are of one mind. The 
eighth canon numbers the sections in which Luke and Mark 
unite. The ninth canon tells us in which sections Luke and 
John alone are found. And finally, the tenth canon recounts 
the sections in which each Gospel stands totally alone. We 
have now the chapters or sections numbered in each Gospel 
from one up to the last section in that Gospel, and the numbers 
standing on the margin, so that we can find any section in any 
Gospel in a moment. And then we have those ten canons. 

The way Eusebius brought the two together and completed 
his system was this. He put on the margin in red ink under every 
number of a section the number of the canon in which it be- 
longed. Thereby he effected at once two desirable things. The 
reader saw instantly whether the section was in any other Gospel 
or not. And if it was in any other Gospel or Gospels he saw 
at once which, for, of course, every reader soon knew by heart 
which Gospels were represented in each canon. That was the 
one good thing effected. The second thing was that by turning 
to that canon at the front of the volume the reader could at 
once find the number of the section he had just read in the 
one Gospel, and would find alongside of it the numbers of 
the hike sections in the other Gospels in which it was found. 
Turning to these sections, he could compare all most accurately. 
Here is the first line of the first canon : 

Mt Mk Lk Joh 
8 2 7 10 

and that means that the eighth section in Matthew corresponds 
to the second in Mark, to the seventh in Luke, and to the tenth 
in John. This was a most ingenious contrivance, and quite 
worthy of a place in modern copies of the Gospels. In some 
manuscripts the matter was made much easier for the reader, and 
the lists of canons were left for more general comparisons. For 
in these books the parallel sections, for the sections which 
occurred upon any given page, were given on the lower margin 
of the page, so that one could turn at once to the companion 
sections in the other Gospels. This arrangement is often found 
in Armenian manuscripts. Eusebius explained his system in a 
letter to Carpianus, and this letter forms the opening part of 



472 THE TEXT 

many of the manuscripts of the Gospels. Of course, the canons 
follow upon the letter, and the frames in which the canons are 
written are often beautifully ornamented in colours, with pillars 
and arches, and above the arches birds of various feather. 



Euthalius. 

For the other books of the New Testament there was no 
need of any arrangement of that kind, for they contained no 
like accounts, no chapters that needed to be compared with each 
other. There is for the Acts, the Catholic Epistles, and the 
Pauline Epistles a whole series of accompaniments to make the 
use of their text easier. We find chapters with descriptive 
headings. Sometimes there are under-divisions in these chapters, 
which again have headings to designate their contents. Then 
these chapters are not only found on the margin, but they are 
also collected in lists at the beginning of each book, affording 
an easy view of its contents. The Church lessons are divided 
off. The days to which they belong are added. The necessary 
introductory words for each lesson are put into the margin 
beside the place where it begins. And the quotations or 
"testimonies," as they are called, are numbered, have their 
source set on the margin at the side of the number, and are 
gathered in lists at the beginning of the books. Add to all this 
a preface for each book, a preface for the Pauline Epistles in 
general, a discussion of Paul's journeys and his martyrdom, and 
it will be apparent that this matter is of considerable extent. 
The name connected with all this is Euthalius, who is also called 
in some manuscripts the bishop of Sulke. But Euthalius does 
not pretend to have done all the work himself. Parts of it were 
probably at his date, say before the end of the fourth century, 
already parts of a long forgotten past, parts were done by a 
previous writer whom he avoids naming and who may have been 
Theodore of Mopsuestia, then much eschewed as a dangerous 
heretic ; many things were done by Euthalius himself, and some 
things may well have been added or changed by one or more 
later hands. As for the text itself, Euthalius marked it off in a 
careful way for the lessons, that is to say for reading purposes, 
adding the accents. Perhaps he wrote the text also in sense 



THE EXTERNALS OF THE TEXT 473 

lines, lines that served to show the subdivisions of thought, as 
our punctuation does. 

The book of Revelation, which was so diligently read in the 
earliest period of the Church, and later so carefully kept out 
of the books of lessons and so much pushed aside, received, so 
far as we know, no chapter division save that which its commen- 
tator Andrew of Caesarea in Cappadocia made. He went about 
this division in a sentimental way. Instead of asking what 
material was in the book, and into how many parts it could be 
most properly divided, he took the number of the elders sitting 
on the twenty-four thrones around the throne in Rev. 4* and 
divided Revelation into twenty-four words or discourses. He 
further reflected then that the person of each of the twenty-four 
elders was properly threefold, for Andrew was a trichotomist, and 
that each consisted of body and soul and spirit. With these 
three divisions of the discourses he made then of the whole book 
seventy-two chapters, three times twenty-four. There is nothing 
like mathematics for a dreamer. 



Modern Chapters. 

All of those chapters are different from our chapters. The 
origin of our chapters has been assigned to Hugo of St. Caro. 
The real divider appears to have been the cardinal Stephen 
Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1228. 
Probably he made the division in the year 1204 or 1205. This 
division never came regularly into the Greek manuscripts of the 
New Testament. It is, so far as I can remember, only rarely 
added in late manuscripts written in the West. But many of the 
manuscripts written in the West have only the regular Greek 
chapters, while some have both the Greek chapters and these 
Latin chapters. When those chapters had been made the 
theologians wished for a still smaller division so as to be able to 
refer more accurately to passages which they needed to quote. 
About the year 1243 a number of learned men under Hugo 
of St. Caro made a concordance to the Bible, and Hugo divided 
each chapter into smaller sections by using the capital letters 
A B C D E F G, although he did not insist upon having all the 
seven sections if the chapter was not very long. A Latin Bible, 



474 THE TEXT 

the translation of Santes Pagnini, was printed at Lyons in 1528, 
and divided into verses, but these verses were in the New Testa- 
ment very different from ours. 



Verses. 

Our verses of to-day did not appear in the first printed editions 
of the Greek New Testament, but they did first appear in a Greek 
New Testament. The way that these verses came to be made 
reminds us of Hugo of St. Caro, who made those A B C D 
sections for his concordance. Robert Estienne was about to 
make a concordance of the New Testament, — his son Henri 
published it finally in 1594, — and therefore wished for a small 
division of the text. He set about the work, and did the 
most of it, as his son tells us, on a journey on horseback be- 
tween Paris and Lyons. Henri uses the words "while riding," 
"inter equitandum," and it has sometimes been supposed that 
he actually did it while jogging and joggling along the road upon 
the back of his steed. It may be that he had a very quiet 
horse, and that he could sometimes have marked divisions 
while the horse was walking leisurely along. Yet I do not 
think that he did that, or that his son Henri says that he did 
that. It seems to me to be more likely that the words "while 
riding " simply mean that he did it in the breaks of this long 
ride. When he got up in the morning he may have done 
something before he set out. During the morning he may have 
rested a while at a wayside inn, and certainly at noon he will 
have done so. And again at night he doubtless drew out his 
little pocket edition and "divided" away until it was time to 
sleep. This verse division was first printed in Robert Estienne's 
fourth edition of the Greek New Testament, which appeared in 
two small volumes in the year 1551 at Geneva. In this edition 
the Greek text was in the middle column, while Erasmus' Latin 
translation was on one side and Jerome's Vulgate on the other. 
Robert Estienne had in mind, as he tells us in the preface, not 
only the coming concordance, but also the convenience of this 
edition. That was in showing easily and clearly what words of 
each of those two translations corresponded to given words of 
the Greek text. 



THE EXTERNALS OF THE TEXT 475 

The first whole Bible with our verses in it was an octavo 
Latin Bible, a Vulgate, that Robert Estienne published at Geneva 
in the year 1555. The earliest New Testament in English 
that was divided into our verses was William Whittingham's 
translation issued at Geneva in 1557. A very different text of 
the New Testament came out in the first complete Bible in 
English with our verses, which was the Geneva Bible, the 
Geneva translation, finished in the year 1560. The first edition 
of the Greek New Testament that had the verses divided up in 
the text was the regrettable " Textus Receptus " Elzevir edition 
of 1633. The verses have gradually here and there been 
changed in various editions. That is much to be deplored, and 
it is much to be wished that in continuation of the work of 
Ezra Abbot, showing where false divisions have crept in, all 
theologians would correct their New Testaments in whatever 
language according to the one standard of Estienne's edition 
of 1551. 

Punctuation. 

In the oldest manuscripts there was very little punctuation. 
In the more carefully written manuscripts an occasional period 
was about all. Even the words were all written together, just 
as they are all spoken together. Now and then a sentence began 
a new line. That was all. Gradually more signs crept in ; the 
comma, and the double point or colon were used more 
frequently. Sometimes a single point was used in three positions 
startlingly separated from each other. The greatest distinction 
was the point high up* The next, but less strong, was in the 
middle* And the third and weakest, about of the effect of a 
comma, was low down, A sign of interrogation is, I think, 
rarely found before the ninth century. Of course, we cannot 
count the points between every two words in the Codex 
Augiensis, and sometimes in the Codex Bornerianus, as being 
precisely punctuation, very much pointed, punctured, and 
punctuated as those texts are. 

It is often said that we cannot use the Greek manuscripts 
of the New Testament as a norm, a rule, or as a special help 
in deciding about the proper punctuation of the text. It seems 
to me that this is going a little too far. There is a fair con- 



4/6 THE TEXT 

nection between Greek and Latin and English and German 
punctuation. Yet there is, if I am not altogether mistaken, 
at least a shade of nationality and of language in the mere 
technical signs and in the method of using them, and I do 
not feel sure that it would be doing justice to the original 
dress of the New Testament for European scholars to punctuate 
without reference to Greek tradition. It is true that many 
manuscripts are badly punctuated, just as they are badly spelled. 
But there are manuscripts that are carefully punctuated, and I 
think that their testimony should be used, and used expressly. 
They are, in fact, the only guides that we have as to the original 
views of the disposition of the words. 

To my mind it is not a sufficient reply to this to say that, 
owing to the point-lessness of, the lack of punctuation in, the 
earlier manuscripts, these later manuscripts which have a punc- 
tuation have no hold in their own past. That reply appears to 
overlook the fact that the "traditional" reading of the given 
passages never ceased to be practised, that is to say, that the 
reading which was continual was exercised in the traditional 
way, giving to the passages the force and the direction and the 
connection that earlier times gave to them, and that this traditional 
reading, this punctuation by word of mouth, was then brought 
into a permanent form in the written punctuation of the manu- 
scripts, and should be at least looked into and respectfully 
considered in the constitution of our texts. The circumstance 
that this will call for some careful collation of certain manuscripts 
that were long since thought to be disposed of cannot be con- 
sidered a reason for neglecting the point. Difficulty of doing 
a thing is not what decides whether it should be done or not. 
It would be of value, I think, if someone should be so self- 
denying as to give a large amount of special attention to this 
matter. If he prove what I have here said to be all wrong, that 
is at least a gain. The field will then be clearer. 



Spelling. 

The care of the text brings with it the question of spelling. 
When the form of the words is brought under consideration a 
similar objection to that referred to a moment ago is often made. 



THE EXTERNALS OF THE TEXT 477 

We are told that the spelling in the manuscripts was altogether 
arbitrary, and determined by the wisdom, sense, ignorance, or 
caprice of the scribes during the centuries of transmission. 
Granting that there is a certain truth in the uncertain tradition 
as to forms of words, I should reply again that we have nothing 
else by which to go, no other due and proper basis for theories 
about the original spelling of Paul's Epistles, for example, to 
take a special case, than what we find in the oldest manuscripts 
in our hands. We are constantly receiving older documents. 
It would be an interesting inquiry as to whether some day we 
shall be able to see so clearly into the early conditions as to 
distinguish between the spelling of the different scribes who 
wrote at Paul's dictation. In the other direction it might be 
asked whether we could find such traces of a uniform and 
early spelling as to decide that Paul had always himself looked 
through the Epistles written at his dictation and had corrected 
the spelling, conforming it to his own standard. Then arises 
the question as to the spelling which the writer of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews favoured. Paul and Luke were probably much 
together. It would be possible that the like measure of 
education which they appear to have enjoyed should have led 
them to use the same spelling, the same forms of the words 
applied to their Christian work or to common life. 

Even if textual critics should declare positively that no trace 
of the original spelling could now be detected, or ever would be 
likely to be discovered, it would be necessary to ask how the 
spelling should be settled. Given witnesses contain forms that 
certainly are old, and that do not agree with the spelling of the 
Attic National Academy. Conceding that these are necessarily 
not Pauline, or Johannean, or Lucan, they nevertheless may carry 
with them a local and a temporal colouring that we should do 
wrong to deprive the New Testament of. It might not always 
be easy to decide what forms to sanction in special cases, but 
the difficulty in deciding is no reason for refusing to consider 
these forms. 

Not as a logical sequence to the foregoing, but as a neigh- 
bouring problem, we should have to determine whether any 
editor has a right to say that the New Testament is in so 
great a measure one book, and emerges within so brief a period 
of time from so limited an area, and from circles of such 



478 THE TEXT 

homogeneous composition that it would be absurd to pay the 
least attention to differences of spelling in different parts thereof, 
even if they should be proved to be original. It must be 
remembered that in the Greek New Testament there can be no 
question as to confusing ill-educated persons by lack of uniformity 
in the spelling, seeing that only educated people take the 
volume in hand. It seems to be the most reasonable and the 
most modest course to follow, so far as any thing of the kind 
can be found, the habits of the best, the earliest, the most 
unbiassed manuscripts. 



479 



X. 

EARL Y HISTOR Y OF TEXT. 

For the textual critic who sets about making an edition of 
the text the method of constituting that text is one of the 
weightiest possible things about which he has to decide. A 
philologian comes to him and declares the decision to be a very 
simple one. The critic of the text has but to take the best 
manuscript — and which is the best manuscript is not difficult to 
say — and to print its text, adding from other manuscripts an 
occasional various reading. In the case of many of the authors 
with which the classical philologian has to do, such a course is 
the only one open to a scholar, inasmuch as there are often but 
few manuscripts in existence, and inasmuch as these few are 
usually so related to each other as to make the choice of the 
best one an easy matter. A lazy man might say : Unfortunately, 
that is not the case with the New Testament. The textual 
critic says : Thank God, our sacred volume has a far different 
testimony from that, and a better one. We have already seen 
what the kinds of witnesses are and how numerous they are, 
the thousands of Greek manuscripts, the thousands of manuscripts 
of the translations, the hundreds or perhaps thousands of 
manuscripts of the church writers. We cannot throw that 
testimony all or almost all away, and say that half a dozen of 
the manuscripts are enough for us. We are bound in duty to 
make as good a use as possible of the talent given to us, and 
neither to bury it nor to throw it away. Yet such a myriad of 
witnesses is puzzling and overwhelming. No one person can 
command them all or force them all to yield their treasures up 
to him. Combined work is necessary. Work must follow upon 
work. Succeeding scholars must stand on the shoulders of 
preceding scholars. Yet we cannot put off constituting the text 
until centuries of combined effort have exhausted the materials 
in our hands. We must be reading the New Testament and 
preaching from it and explaining it, and we need for that purpose 



480 THE TEXT 

a text, and always at each moment the best text available. The 
textual critic must be ever settling texts as he goes along. It 
is, like all human work, but temporary. A later time will make 
a better text, and a still later time a still better one. 



Classes of Text. 

In the effort to cope with these multitudes of witnesses, 
whether for the purpose of deciding instantly upon a text for 
the present, or for the purpose of preparing the gradual complete 
exhaustion of the testimony, it is necessary to do upon a large 
scale the very thing that the classical philologian did with his 
more limited material upon a small scale. We must try to 
classify. Ever} 7 scholar who combines two manuscripts and 
thereby makes one out of them advances the work to be done. 
Every group of manuscripts that we know thoroughly forms 
a kilometre stone that marks progress in the long journey. 
Such combination of witnesses, beginning at the single witnesses 
and aiming at their unification and simplification, is the basis of 
all good work in textual criticism. It forms, even strange as that 
may seem, the basis for the work at the precisely opposite end 
of the line of research and of combinative reflection. Glad as 
we are to see individual manuscripts dissolving into each other, 
our gaze also goes out towards the great masses of witnesses, and 
wishes to see them gather together into a few great societies of 
known character from which we may look to receive such and 
such testimony. 

Kinds of Classes. 

It would indeed seem to the untutored mind at the first 
glance as if such inquiries must be unnecessary. We spoke at 
the outset of the copying of manuscripts. Should we assume 
that the early Christians in the to them most natural following up 
of Jewish copying habits, of the Jewish rules for copying the law 
in particular, copied every word most cautiously and counted its 
letters, it would appear next to impossible that classes of text 
should arise, and most of all that they should arise in that 
earliest period during which the connection with Judaism was 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT 48 1 

still so near. This view overlooks two important considerations. 
The one touches Judaism, and we can be brief with it. The 
extraordinary pains of the Masora with the copying of the law 
was probably a thing of a much later date than the earliest copies 
of the manuscripts of the books of the New Testament. There 
fore we cannot presuppose that this painful exactness had any 
effect upon the earliest Christian copyists or scribes. The other 
consideration, however, touches the Christian side, and goes to 
preclude all such thoughts of Masoretical accuracy. In the first 
place, the most of the early Christian copyists were probably not 
particularly well versed in the art of writing and copying. And 
in the second place, the books of the New Testament were not 
recognised at the first moment as sacred books. This we saw 
above in treating of the criticism of the canon. And in con- 
sequence, even had the Christians had a prevision of that later 
Masoretic accuracy, they would have had no occasion to apply 
it to the books which had not yet become sacred. 

Let us then again attack the matter of the classes of text, 
and ask ourselves in what way differences in the words and 
sentences could arise. We must not lose ourselves in the 
woods of the consideration of the merely external side of 
the matter, and we may say briefly that differences might 
have arisen, and certainly did arise, without any intention on 
the part of the copyist to make any change, and as well, on 
the contrary, as the result of the direct purpose of a scribe 
or theologian. Variations were unintentional and intentional. 
It is, I think, important before we go to the question of the 
classes in detail to make one or two observations here in 
reference to the probable origin of these classes. It is the habit 
in philology to call the classes of manuscripts the genealogy or 
the genealogical classes of the text, and the term is a fit one. 
One manuscript is the son of an older one, the father of a 
younger one. In philology the classes differ in general from 
each other chiefly in the continuation, the propagation, of faults 
which have not been conscious ones, of changes which were not 
the results of will but of human frailty. The sources of error may 
have been in the vision. The eye may in its haste have taken a 
dim N for an H, or an H for a IT, or an € for an O, or for a C, 
or a T for a T. It may have mistaken a whole word for another 
that had about the same general form. The eye may have 
3* 



482 THE TEXT 

returned from the page that was being written and caught the 
same word as the one just copied, but at another part of the 
column or in another column, and therefore in continuing the 
copy have omitted all that was between those two occurrences 
of the same word. Or the error may have arisen in the ear. 
The text may have been read in the hearing of several scribes, 
each of whom wrote without seeing the text, and exhibited faults 
of hearing. Enough of that. These mistakes are purely 
accidental and unintentional. In general we may, I think, say 
that the errors in the ordinary run of classical or of profane texts 
are of this kind. 

It is unnecessary to say that the scribes, the copyists of 
the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, were also men, 
also fallible, and that they committed in like manner faults 
or made mistakes which were in no way connected with their 
will. Now the classes in the majority of the texts of the profane 
authors, who for the most part have but few documents, rest 
largely upon such errors in their cumulative and accumulated pro- 
pagation. It is natural that philologians and philologically trained 
theologians should at the first blush take it for granted that the 
classes in the text of the New Testament originated in the same 
way. A result of this, if I am not mistaken, false conception 
and assumption was the presentation in the prefaces to the 
Greek New Testament of the ordinary, well-established canons of 
philological criticism as if these were the special principles of the 
given editor for the determination of the text of his edition. And 
such prefaces then only propagated further the false conception. 
It was a matter of course that the critic of the text of the New 
Testament should use these rules in handling his sources, as 
much a matter of course as that a cabinetmaker or a smith treat 
wood and metal according to the rules for treating wood and 
metal even when making an altar or a reading-desk, or a chancel 
railing or a bronze lectern. Were these the only sources of 
change in the text of the New Testament we should, I opine, 
have a very different task before us, and a very much simpler one. 
Classes of New Testament manuscripts arising in this way may 
be met with at almost every turning, to speak with a slight 
exaggeration. 

But these classes, such classes, have scarcely a distant 
relationship to the classes of the tradition of the New Testa- 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— ORIGINAL TEXT 483 

ment text properly so called. This is the reason which renders 
the criticism of the text of this New Testament such an absurd 
thing to the mind of the ordinary philologian before he has 
examined closely into the state of the case. I should even 
venture the hypothesis that a confusion of these classes or a 
mistaking of these classes for the sources of the classes of the 
New Testament text was the cause for the original hopes of the 
greatest philologian the world has ever seen, Richard Bentley, of 
a speedy solution of the difficult problems of this text. At that 
day neither he nor anyone else could see through the maze. 
Gradually Griesbach and Hug and Lachmann caught glimpses 
of the relations that were in existence. Neither Tregelles nor 
Tischendorf occupied himself deeply with the matter. And it 
was left again to two Englishmen, again to Cambridge, to 
Westcott, who was Bentley's distant successor in the chair, and to 
his friend Hort, to set forth these classes for the first time in an 
intelligible clearness. Their work was initiative work. They 
knew that others would go beyond them. But they broke a way 
through the wilderness, or, to change the figure, they disentangled 
the mass of the apparently hopelessly knotted threads of this 
tradition. This practical example has brought me unawares to 
the point that must here follow. I shall for the moment leave 
this part of the discussion and, returning to what we said when 
beginning with the criticism of the text, speak of what seems to 
have been the course of events in the early days of the textual 
tradition. What I have to say is the view of Westcott and Hort 
with some slight and external modifications, modifications which 
they would in part probably have made themselves had they 
been less cautious, less prudent, and less modest than they were. 



The Original Text. 

The books of the New Testament, the Epistles — are they 
read first in the church services because they were first written 
and because they therefore are prefaces for the Gospels? — the 
Gospels, the Acts, Revelation have been written. As I think 
for the moment of about the year 100, I must remind myself that 
Second Peter probably was not yet written, but Jude gives us 
some of it in a much more concise form. The most of them 



484 THE TEXT 

have already been copied off a large number of times, copied 
partly because worn out and needing to be replaced for the same 
church, and partly because new churches or other churches far 
and near asked to have them sent to them. We must assume 
that these very first copies were really among the best, I mean, 
the most accurate copies that ever were made. Not that they 
were pretty or very well written, although those made at Rome 
may have been that too. They were probably the most accurate 
because copied simply and naively. I conceive of the early 
years as by far the best years until the passage of a couple of 
centuries. The copying before the year 100 will have, as a rule, 
been better than the copying that was done in general up to the 
year — to name a totally unfixable year — 350. Of the later years 
we have to speak afterwards. Let us hold for the moment to 
the years before 100. 

And I begin by at once retrenching the statement above. 
There is, I think, one large or determined exception to be made. 
I beg, however, to emphasise the fact that this exception is 
pure theory on my part. I have no proof for it. It only 
appears to me to be the best explanation for the facts which 
we afterwards observe. And, of course, I think — others will 
think differently — that the theory agrees with the conceivable 
or probable course of Christian life and habit at that day. The 
exception is the book of Revelation. At present I still cling 
to the supposition that it was written before the year 70, though 
I confess that the later date, say the year 90, has something 
to say for itself. Owing to the inclination of that age towards 
all manner of apocalyptic visions, owing to the longings for 
a future suited to make good all that the Christians — as well 
as the Jews — had suffered and were then suffering, this book 
was probably far more frequently sought for, read, and copied 
during the years of which we are speaking, the years up to 100, 
than any other Christian book. It seems likely that it was 
originally a Jewish book, and that a Christian re-wrought it. 
Now, my theory is that this book was during these years the 
object of an active, not cannonade, but infantry fire. This, 
however, must not be taken in a hostile sense, save so far as it 
was hostile to the purity of the text. The people liked the book. 
They revelled in its dreams and they dreamed its dreams and 
they embellished its dreams. That was a time of simplicity. 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— ORIGINAL TEXT 485 

The book was not yet scripture. It was a dream-book. Every- 
one could dream. Everyone could add another trait here and 
there to enliven the story. Enough of the theory. That seems 
to me to be the probable exception to the plain and simple 
copying of the books of the New Testament during the closing 
years of the first century. 

These early copyists will have made the mistakes that are 
the first objects of the philological canons of criticism. They 
will have written words wrong or left words out. But they 
will not have changed the text willingly. It will not have 
occurred to them to change it. The result will have been that 
we may conceive of a large number of copies having already 
been made of pretty much all the books of the New Testa- 
ment, save of the then lately issued Gospel of John, which, 
however, will rapidly have caught up to the other Gospels in 
its course through the churches. These copies were doubtless 
for the most part still copies of single rolls, although here and 
there several of the Epistles of Paul may have been put into one 
roll. Now, the text found in these early copies will have been 
essentially the original text. The errors to which we have 
referred were doubtless in the main as usual of a minor character, 
and have in their unintentional kind done nothing to change the 
form of the text as a whole. Before leaving this text to consider 
all that happens to it to modify it, and all that follows upon it, I 
wish to emphasise the fact that single copies of it, especially of 
books that had been re-copied on parchment, may have lasted 
well on into the second century, the parchment books or rolls, 
at least till the fourth century. This text I name boldly the 
Original Text. It is the text which Westcott and Hort in their 
shrinking modesty called Pre-Syrian and of no family. But it is 
to all intents and purposes the Original Text. No one has been 
doctoring it. No one has set about changing it. Only the book 
of Revelation has, at least theoretically, had a different fate, and 
has, not by the premeditated work of a single Christian but by 
the fitful and sympathetic attentions of many a pen backed by 
many a fancy, been turned into a piebald representative of its 
former self. Of course, we do not call that the original text of 
Revelation. We shall name it in a moment. 



486 THE TEXT 



The Re-Wrought Text. 

We pass on to the second century. No one will, I trust, 
imagine that I conceive of these living processes as being limit- 
able thus by sharp dates, because for the sake of a certain 
definiteness I put in dates and give to shadowy thoughts a local 
habitation and a name. Textual traditions can no more be cut 
across with a knife into living sections than an arm can. I said 
a moment ago that the Original Text named lived on in a private 
way, did not halt and cease at the year ioo, and as well must 
I say here that the process now to be described also had roots 
and preceding stages and beginnings before the year ioo. The 
second century is a middle ground. It was neither the early 
day of unbounded enthusiasm nor was it the later day of calm 
and definite science. It was neither Peter and John, nor Origen 
and Hippolytus. Should it at times appear to be chaotic, its 
chaos is one of life, not of death. If heresies begin in it, the 
heresies proper are noble, self-denying heresies and not self- 
seeking ones. Let us look at the text and its treatment during 
this century. The books of the New Testament are already 
widely spread. The number of Christian churches is rapidly 
increasing. The apostle, as the wandering preacher is called, 
the missionary we should say to-day, is kept moving. It is 
forbidden to him to stay in one place more than a day, possibly 
two days, at most three days. He must go on and on, and carry 
the word farther. And where the word takes root, and a group 
of Christians is formed, there a book of the New Testament may 
soon be desired. The means of the Christians and the books to 
be found in the neighbourhood will have decided how many and 
what books they first got. This process of rapid increase may 
well have lasted, with many a break and many a standstill and 
many a reverse in single districts, on into the fourth century, 
or at least until the middle of the third. 

Let me say at once that in general it is not to be supposed 
that the new additions to the number of the faithful occupied 
themselves with the text in any other sense than as diligent 
readers and ponderers of it. The reason that I have thus 
pressed at length upon the spread of Christianity, is to show 
and to urge the call for copies thereby created, and the conse- 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— RE-WROUGHT TEXT 487 

quent ever-increasing carrying into new districts of whatever 
text the older churches used. In the wide fields in which the 
Church had taken a firm stand, and won a definite place from 
the first, the text was the object of the most diligent atten- 
tion. Our eyes must turn to the churches in Palestine, and 
remember Caesarea and Antioch ; to the churches in Asia Minor, 
and think of Ephesus and Smyrna with their sister cities ; to 
the churches in Greece, and recall Corinth ; to the churches in 
Italy, and behold Rome; to the churches in Africa, and fancy 
the forerunners of Tertullian in the West and of Pantsenus in 
the East. In the domain of these churches there were still 
in the earlier part of the second century many who had near 
traditional bonds with the time of the apostles, as we saw in the 
criticism of the canon (pp. 75, 102). Now for such persons the 
inclination to put pen to the margin of the books of the New 
Testament must often have been very strong. The very external 
circumstance that the rolls were written, so that the addition was 
and looked much more normal and fitting than an addition to 
our printed texts, must have made the thought of addition and 
of change more easy. 

Precisely what was changed or added depended upon the 
special case. Here was an old man who had seen, known, heard 
Paul ; here was a man whose father had known and heard other 
apostles ; here was a man with some fragmentary roll of an 
earlier evangelical story, an earlier tradition about words of 
Jesus. One was sure that when the given Epistle came from 
Paul the sentence read thus and thus. Another had heard that 
Jesus at that point had used these precise words, which were not 
in the text before him. Another had a beautiful story, let us say 
the account of the Adulteress, and was ready to put it into the 
Gospels somewhere. Another one was sure that Jesus would not 
have spoken thus, but must have spoken thus. Another, even 
without traditional hold, was ready to add, to strike out, to 
change because it seemed to him that at the given point he could 
make the New Testament books better than they were. It was 
all in the Church. These were books of the Church. He was 
a member of the Church. Of course he had a right to improve 
these books. 

We must herewith again urge a previous observation. These 
books were at the first moment not sacred in the same sense 



488 THE TEXT 

as the writings of the Old Testament. They were books of 
the day. They came from a valued preacher, from that little 
shrivelled up missionary Paul who went about from place to 
place with his loom packed together on his back. They were 
Gospels, it may be, a written form of what the apostles and 
wandering evangelists were saying by word of mouth. For the 
future of this literature there was no thought. The literature 
would have no future. The future would bring, and that right 
soon, the return of Jesus. The Messiah and King must soon 
appear. And so one and another used his pen on the margin 
and between the lines of these books without feeling any com- 
punction. Two points are not to be lost sight of in this 
connection. In the first place, the general remarks just made 
are not to be understood in the sense that positively everyone, 
every Christian who could read and write, felt an inclination to 
modify in this way the text, or even that the majority of the 
Christians wrote in the manuscripts. The aim of these remarks 
is to show the thoughts of those who really did use their pens in 
this way. And, in the second place, the alterations or additions 
made by these hands were by the necessity of life locally different, 
and therefore the changes made in one place were more notice- 
able than those made in another. The gifts and the experiences 
of one Christian who changed the text were not the same as the 
gifts and experiences of another. 

The necessary consequence was that these texts then took 
gradually a somewhat different form in different provinces. 
Many a change was made early and and then passed by the 
process of manuscript transmission and tradition, or by the 
verbal communication of member to member, into other districts. 
Yet each district kept adding or changing for itself. This 
brought a difference of character from that of the Original Text 
which remained in general, so far as it remained untouched, 
of one and the same cast. This text was, strictly speaking, 
alike in no two provinces. It proceeded from no single source. 
It pursued no single aim. In fact, at the first instant the observer 
would be quite right in declaring that it was not a text, was not 
a clear-cut revision or correction of the former text, but that it 
was a series of varying experiences of the earlier text in various 
places. One could deny that we were justified in individualis- 
ing it, in calling it "it." As time passed this process, however, 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— RE-WROUGHT TEXT 489 

ceased. It did not cease as if an express-train brake had stopped 
it. It was not cut off at midnight on the last day of the year 200. 

In most districts it had come to an end fifty years before that 
point of time. We shall nevertheless, for the sake of clearness, 
in order to fix the thought, name the year 200 as the close of 
this process. What has been said makes it apparent, not only 
that we must see in the witnesses of that period which are in our 
hands, traces of different phases of this second kind of text, but 
also that we must be prepared to meet with, must expect to 
meet with, still further phases of it in any new records of the 
period which the future may bestow upon us. But in all its 
phases this text will have two characteristics which merge into 
each other. It will in the first place be old. Be the alterations 
in it, the additions to it, what they may, none of them will recall 
to us the characteristics of a later period in the life of the Church 
or in the fortunes of the text. Wherever we light upon them 
they will meet us with the lavender-freighted air of the ancestral 
chest. And it will, in the second place, precisely with this age, 
preserve for us large quantities of the Original Text. It is not 
another text re-wrought, but the Original Text re-wrought. And 
that in it which is not changed, which, of course, will be by far 
the greater part of it, that is original text. 

When we spoke a moment ago o£ the many phases of this 
text, some persons may have had a feeling of mistrust towards 
it, and an inclination to shrink away from its uncertainty and 
intangibility. A moment's reflection shows, however, that in 
this very respect it is of great value to us. In the different 
phases and different modifications, the parts of the original 
text that were modified, or that were left untouched, become 
clearer to our view. Two modifications of the same words 
permit a more certain conclusion as to what the original words 
were, than a single modification does. And words modified by 
one province may in another have been left as they were. 

The name of this text is the Re-Wrought Text. This is the 
plain everyday name for the fact that is observed. Westcott 
and Hort used the old name Western Text, though they conceded 
that, or better, asserted that the word Western was wrong, that 
it was not a Western text. It was their inborn and scientific 
modesty that led them to use the old name. But a name has its 
influence upon the thoughts, ard if we recognise that a name is 



49° THE TEXT 

one that leads the thoughts astray in spite of themselves, the 
sooner we change it the better. To call this Re-Wrought Text 
the Western Text, pulls the mind awry, and compels a constant 
astigmatism of view. That figure is doubtless all wrong, for I am 
no oculist, but I mean that the eye of the mind sees Western and 
does not see Western, and that the rays refuse to centre. 

This Re-Wrought Text was the text which at the close of the 
second century was to be found almost everywhere. It was not to 
be found wherever by some happy provision of providence, bearing 
upon the clearness of mind or on the comparative freedom from 
mental action — here is an argument for the people who deprecate 
general education — of a given community, the Original Text was 
to be found. But it was to be found everywhere else. There 
were then but these two kinds of texts. We see here again how 
little it will do to deal rashly with dates. Lachmann thought he 
could get a text of the fourth century or the text of the fourth 
century. What he really got was something far better. He did 
not know, as we now know, that the text of the fourth century was 
the worst text there is. Now, if a good Christian should say : 
Give me the text of the second century, and I will ask for nothing 
better, he would be wide of the mark. He would find in this 
Re-Wrought Text a better text than that text of the fourth century, 
but it would still not be the right, the Original Text. This text 
had in the second century a certain fascination for the Christian 
gaze. It retains some of that power to-day. Alongside of the 
Original Text it was more juicy, more popular, and more full. 
It left almost nothing out. It added almost all it could lay 
hands upon. 

Many a scholar looks at it to-day and finds in it a charm that 
the other old text does not possess. One part of its charm for 
some scholars lay with justice, though not a justice that they 
recognised, in the measure of its preservation of the original text. 
They then proceeded to claim for it the excellence that belonged 
not to it but to the Original Text, so far as that was still to be 
found within the witnesses for the Re- Wrought Text. In con- 
sequence of this preservation of its source it plays everywhere 
into the hands of the Original Text. Its witnesses are of neces- 
sity among the most important witnesses for that text. What 
we need to do is to distinguish between what is original and 
what is re-wrought. 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— POLISHED TEXT 49 1 

There must, of course, be something chameleon-like in such a 
text, in that it varies in the many shadings of local alteration. 
That does not matter. And, at any rate, we must take our text 
as we find it. We must use the witnesses that tradition has 
given us. We cannot have them made to order. This Re- 
Wrought Text has given us no tokens of scientific operations 
to which the text was subjected. It has shown us people who 
acted naively rather than of set purpose. They were practical, 
not theoretical people. They were not thinking of the text as 
a text or as a book. They were full of the thing, the thoughts, 
the story, the exhortation, the vision. And here we see that 
the process which we have described is the same as that to 
which we pointed when speaking of the book of Revelation 
and its text during the former period. Special reasons led the 
Christians to work over, to impress themselves upon the text 
of Revelation at that early time, and the special character of 
that book called for that treatment of its text, guided and made 
easy that treatment, and prevented the all too speedy application 
of a similar treatment to the other books. But here I shall say 
something against myself. It was one of the difficulties with 
Westcott and Hort that they knew so very much, that it was 
hard for them not to know and not to recognize the justice of 
the "other side." With less knowledge I should like to emulate 
their modesty. Here, therefore, I observe, that if anyone prefer 
to suppose that the working over of the various books of the 
New Testament did not tarry for the year 100, did not merely 
have roots and inceptions before that date, but vigorous action, 
I shall not quarrel with him. 



The Polished Text. 

The first inclinations of the early Christians were not scientific 
inclinations. That was no wonder. But science came with 
time. Scholars were converted and became Christians, and 
Christians were trained and became scholars. It is usual to 
point for the earliest Christian scholarship to Alexandria and to 
the beginnings of the theological school that threads upon its 
necklace the names of Pantaenus, Clement, Origen, and Dionysius. 
I do not wish to detract in the least from the merits of that 



49 2 THE TEXT 

school. Yet with that persistent bent towards theorising under 
which these pages have so often suffered, I should like to break 
a lance for Antioch again, and to say here in connection with the 
text, that I would fain think that at a very early date, long before 
the definite knowledge we have of it, there existed at Antioch 
a theological school. 

The moment that Christian science existed, that moment it 
busied itself with the text of the New Testament. There is 
no help for that. Whether at Alexandria, or at Antioch, or 
at Caesarea, when men who had had an accurate training in 
grammar came to examine closely the text, they found many a 
trifle that did not agree with the rules then long recognised for 
the use of the Greek language. They were acquainted with the 
dangers of manuscript tradition, and had at least some vague 
conception of the comparatively unlearned character of the 
early Christian communities. When, then, they found in the 
text of the books of the New Testament what seemed to them 
to be or what actually were faults of one kind and another, two 
ways of accounting for these faults were open to them. It was 
possible to say that the writers of these books had been guided 
and protected from faults by the Holy Spirit, that the original 
form of their writings must have been in every respect all that 
could be desired, and that if in the copies in hand there were 
found errors or faults, these must necessarily be attributed to the 
carelessness or ignorance of the Christians who had from time 
to time copied the rolls. There is, then, no need to say that 
Christian scholars, detecting these faults, corrected them without 
hesitation ; and considered themselves not merely justified in so 
doing, but as forced by duty to do so. That was the one view. 

It was possible also to say that these writers of the New 
Testament were most of them by no means so well at home in 
the Greek language as to be able to use it skilfully, to write it 
correctly. They were guided by the Spirit of God in the sense 
of their utterances. But this Spirit of God did not occupy itself 
with the external form of the language. In consequence, the 
sacred writers had written less elegantly and less correctly than 
was really to be desired in a book of so great moment. That 
had not been a serious detriment to the spread of Christianity 
during those earlier years of plain preaching. Now, however, 
that cultured men began to interest themselves for Christianity, 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— POLISHED TEXT 493 

now that the reading of these writings formed so important a 
part in the services of the churches, it was necessary that a 
skilful hand smooth away the linguistic roughnesses and make 
the text, if not good, at least better than it had been. We may 
imagine that the scholars of Alexandria and Antioch and Caesarea 
viewed the matter from the one or the other of these two points 
of view. 

There does not appear to have been any concerted action in 
reference to the text. So far as our documents go, no one seems 
to have set about a regular revision of the whole New Testament, 
or even of one or more books. Whether these scholars did not 
venture to do the thing thoroughly, and whether they supposed 
that if they did but change a little here and there for the better it 
would never be noticed, or whether the rolls in which they made 
their complete correction of the text have failed to be handed down 
to us, we cannot with certainty determine. What we find in the 
documents, and particularly in documents and in the writings of 
theologians connected with Egypt, is that in a number of passages, 
readings have been produced which have certainly been after- 
thoughts and not the original readings, and which betray the 
moulding hand of the trained scholar which has been making the 
text more presentable to, more agreeable for learned and for 
educated eyes and ears. 

Seeing that this correction of the text either did not extend 
to the whole New Testament or has at least not reached our 
hands in its entirety, we perhaps should speak only of "readings" 
and not of a " text." Yet we give it for the present the benefit 
of the doubt and call it a text. If complete manuscripts be 
one day found, they can at once pass into their place. This text 
I name the Polished Text. This name is again one that simply 
puts the fact on record. The corrector wished to file the text 
off, to give to it as nearly as possible the smooth surface of 
polite diction. Westcott and Hort called it, and that with 
geographical propriety, the Alexandrian Text. The documents 
for it thus far known agree with that name. Nevertheless, I 
have taken the matter of fact name, partly led perhaps by a less 
matter of fact and rather sentimental desire to keep the door 
open for the possible participation of a dreamed of early 
Antiochian school in this learned care for the text. 

Since this text is, as has been seen, of a fragmentary character 



494 THE TEXT 

or of an ethereal existence, it is less easy to determine definitely 
at what time it probably arose. It seems most likely to have 
been the work of the early third century or of the late second 
century, and it will be the most prudent thing for us for the 
present to date it simply with the year ± 200. The scholar 
may comfort himself with the thought that his predecessors at 
that day tried to do their duty towards the text, even though we 
to-day do not think that what they did was after all the right 
thing to do. It is in connection with this text that we can 
apparently in some places see that Clement of Alexandria used 
different rolls of scripture when writing different works. 

Herewith we close the short list of the old text. We might 
in one way term these three texts single-eyed texts. The Original 
Text, the Re-Wrought Text, and the Polished Text were all simple 
texts. For the Original Text that is a matter of course. For the 
Re-Wrought it is the result of the fact that the application of the 
foreign material to the Original Text takes place more in the 
way of accretion than in that of combination. I hope that is as 
sensible and as intelligible as it sounds. What I mean is that 
the additions to the Original Text which were made in the Re- 
Wrought Text seldom took the form of interweaving parts of 
sentences of the old text with similar parts from other sources, 
but were clear additions of new matter, whether long or short 
ones. The Polished Text is again altogether single. There is 
little or no question in it of the gathering together of previous 
material. The two older texts, and especially the Original Text, 
are its only basis, but not its basis in such a sense as that the 
corrector regards them as two sources which he must write into 
one, not even its basis in such a sense that this corrector recog- 
nises them as two distinct things. 



The Syrian Revisions. 

Should we call upon a good bishop in Antioch in the year 
230, supposing that that year and the bishop were still accessible, 
we might find him puzzling his brains over the three texts that 
we have just named. A parish clergyman from a village off 
towards Aleppo had come in to this great city to ask the advice 
of the learned bishop about a text which had given rise to some 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— SYRIAN REVISIONS 495 

difficulties for him and the clergy near him. The bishop found 
that the clergyman had a very old manuscript, and we know when 
we look at it, what the bishop did not know, that this roll 
represented quite fairly the Original Text. The verse struck the 
bishop as strange, and on taking his own roll of the book down 
from the case above his desk, he found that his text was not the 
same. Now his roll was one of the Re- Wrought Text. While 
the bishop and the priest were pondering over the matter, a young 
clergyman from Asia Minor came into the room. He had been 
studying for a time at Alexandria, as we know that Gregory of 
Nazianzus did, and was now on his way home, but resting for 
a few days at Antioch. The bishop spoke of the text, and the 
Asia Minorite drew out of his bosom a new roll of the book 
which he had copied at Alexandria, and showed a still different 
reading, one that was clearer and in better Greek than the other 
two, the reading of the Polished Text. 

Now I cannot give the hour of the day at which, nor the day 
of the month on which, this happened, nor do I feel sure of the 
precise text which had plagued the group of village pastors and 
caused the journey of their representative to consult the bishop. 
But one thing is sure, and that is that such difficulties were rife, 
and rife in more than one place. The fact that Syria formed a 
middle ground, may have led the clergy there to feel the difficulty 
the more keenly. Into Antioch came from the west not only now 
and then more distant theologians from Rome and Athens, but 
also and especially the mentally active Greeks from Asia Minor. 
From the east came the Greeks living among the Syriac-speaking 
population, and compelled to know and to explain the readings 
of the Syrian manuscripts, and to compare them with their own 
Greek manuscripts. And from the south came the men who 
had sat at the feet of Origen at Caesarea, or who had been 
spending, like the above-mentioned clergyman, some time at 
Alexandria for the purpose of study. No other point in all 
Christendom was in such a respect and to such an extent central. 
Further, however, the subsequent history of Antioch offers the 
apparently correct sequence for the previous scholarly inclinations 
and learned practices of Antioch. 

In the earlier times there had been no leisure for, and no 
one had felt the need of, textual researches, or of efforts to 
correct the text. Then the Christians had lived and preached 



496 THE TEXT 

and fought a good fight, but had not bothered themselves much 
about various readings. But the time seems now to have come 
for the consideration of the text. We are not perfectly clear about 
the matter. Much remains to be cleared up or to be cleared 
away and changed by future inquiries. Yet the most likely course 
of events from our present position and with our present power 
of reading in the dark mirror of the past is the following. 



The First Syrian Revision. 

Someone in Antioch — it might have been a company of 
scholars, but it was probably a single one — at the request of the 
bishop or feeling himself the difficulty of the described state of 
affairs, determined to revise the text, to bring the text into a 
good and practical shape. We may name for him as a date 
the middle of the second century, though it may have been 
somewhat earlier, but was probably somewhat later. The pre- 
cise year is of no great moment, seeing that we do not have to 
compare it again with a definitely fixed year in the neighbouring 
decades. The material that he had at command we have already 
mentioned. 

Now we may question whether the task that placed itself before 
the mind of this theologian was just the one that a modern critic 
of the text would appoint for him if he could project himself 
back through the centuries and assume the position of guide and 
mentor for the Antiochian scholar. I do not think it likely that 
the problem before the mind of that Syrian Greek scholar was 
devoid of reference to the original text, but I do think it likely 
that the question of the genuine words filled a much narrower 
space in his deliberations than it would in our minds to-day. He 
will probably have bent his thoughts more upon two or rather 
upon three things. 

In the first place, it will have been his wish to have in his 
text everything that was in the manuscripts before him that he 
could conscientiously bring into it. Just as the ordinary author 
or editor to-day desires, if possible, in making a new edition to 
be able to say that it is " revised and enlarged," so the natural 
wish of that reviser in Syria will have been to make each book as 
full and complete as the texts in his hands permitted. Feeling 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— FIRST SYRIAN REVISION 497 

sure of this principle in his mind, we shall at least have in the 
text which he constructs a clue to the more exact contents of the 
manuscripts which he had in his hands. In general, we have to 
reckon with the established and acknowledged habit both of 
tradition by word of mouth and of written tradition to increase 
and not to decrease the thing, the statement, the history, the 
argument, the explanation, which has been received and which 
is passed on to the next persons in the order of place and 
especially in the order of time. That was the first aim. 

In the second place, our reviser will have been intent upon 
relieving any difficulties which were found in one or in all of the 
texts in his hands. One of the main reasons for going at the 
work, for undertaking to reconstitute or to redetermine the text 
of the books of the New Testament, was that in the single manu- 
scripts difficulties were found, the solution of which gave the 
keenest exegetes trouble. And there was coupled with this the 
difficulty that arose when two different witnesses gave different and 
clashing testimony. The reviser will, in judging of different read- 
ings before him, have been sure not, for example, in this point to 
have been led, by the consideration of the necessity of reaching 
the original text, to press the well-known canon, of all textual 
criticism in whatever language and with respect to whatever book, 
that the harder reading is the truer reading. He will have had 
his daily life in mind, and the need of leaving as few problems as 
possible unsolved, and he will have chosen the easier reading. 
In pursuance of the same thought, in the case of difficult readings 
which did not differ in the documents before him, he will have 
been inclined, when it proved possible by a trifling or apparently 
trifling change to render the sense clear and unquestionable, to 
make such a change and to have more unconsciously than con- 
sciously thereby presupposed that he in this way attained either 
the original text or the text that the original writer would have 
written, had his attention been called to this difficulty. That was 
the second aim. 

The third aim reminds us in part of the very last remark and 
in part and particularly of the Polished Text. For, in the third 
place, the reviser will have desired to make a smooth text, a 
text free from less elegant expressions, a text that contained no 
odd or obsolete grammatical forms, a text that would not excite 
the disdain of scholarly men who heard it read. And here again 
32 



49§ THE TEXT 

the question of authenticity of the words and phrases will cer- 
tainly not have stood in the foreground of his thoughts. He 
will have thought of the beauty and not of the Tightness, vhe 
correctness of the sentences in reference to originality as having 
been the words of the author. 

Such we suppose to have been the work of an Antiochian 
theologian somewhere near the middle of the third century. 
It has sometimes been suggested that an Egyptian theologian 
may have shared in the work. It must be conceded that we are 
totally ignorant of ail details, and that the co-operation of an 
Alexandrian scholar would be quite conceivable. The Alex- 
andrian critic might have remained at home and sent his 
thoughts about the text to Antioch by a messenger, receiving 
in return the suggestions of his colleague at Antioch by the same 
messenger. Or the Alexandrian might have made the journey to 
Antioch and there have contributed to the revision. I confess, 
however, that this common work does not seem to me to be 
very likely. It reminds me more of modern times. The English 
revisers with their American colleagues across the Atlantic have 
so far as I can remember no parallel in antiquity. It would be 
far less difficult for me to suppose that an Egyptian revision of 
the text preceded or succeeded the revision in Antioch. 

We have a definite reason for placing this work at Antioch or 
at least in Syria. And if we go to Syria, Antioch is the place that 
most commends itself to us. The reason is this. The Syrian 
translation of the New Testament appears to have been revised 
soon after the same time and in the same sense, that is to say, 
so as to present in general a newly determined text, even though 
perhaps not precisely the same text as that found in the Greek 
form. Now this circumstance points to the work of revision as 
done in Syria. Without doubt the difficulties found in the 
Syrian version had also contributed to hasten the necessity of the 
revision. And the moment that the Greek text was done, or 
even perhaps step by step as the revision advanced, the Syrian 
translation was made to correspond to it. Had the revision been 
made in Alexandria it would have been possible that the Coptic 
texts, the Boheiric and the Saidic, would have been made to 
correspond to the Greek. I remember no such change in them. 
The theologian who made this revision probably did it, probably 
was fitted to do it and was appointed to do it, because he was 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT — FIRST SYRIAN REVISION 499 

known as one of the most learned men of his day at Antioch. 
He is likely to have been asked to do it by the bishop of Antioch, 
and may even well have done it in the " palace " of the bishop, 
if we could imagine that by that time the bishop there ventured 
to have a larger house or series of houses for himself and his 
clergy and our hypothetical school. 

We should, of course, like very much to know what became 
of this revision, that is to say, what success it met with as a 
literary and ecclesiastical effort. We should be inclined to think 
that in view of the generally or often acknowledged differences 
in the current texts, and of the disagreeable consequences that 
resulted from them, all Christians who heard of this work, at least 
all theologians, would at once have ordered copies of it for them- 
selves. At present we are not able to say just how far that took 
place. There are, however, two circumstances to be brought into 
view which help to make the surroundings clearer. 

That revision of the Syrian text, to make it agree with the 
revised Greek text, may have been cared for in Antioch or, it 
may be, in one of the more definitely Syrian centres, centres 
of Syrian speech, Nisibis and Edessa. We have a fairly definite 
proof that this revision of the Syrian text was made and backed 
up by the Church authorities. For the Syriac manuscripts 
of the older text disappeared almost as if by magic, and only 
the newer text was copied off. That was possible with the 
Syrian manuscripts. They were in comparison of limited range. 
They were to be reached by the authorities from that one great 
Syrian centre. The Greek text was in a different position. It 
was scattered over wider fields, and was not at that time to be 
commanded by any single authority. This Greek text — I refer in 
this sentence to the revised Greek text — does not seem to have 
gone very far: We might imagine that it passed from Antioch to 
one church and another in Asia Minor to the north-west and in 
Palestine to the south. But the previous texts, and that means, 
of course, especially the Re-Wrought Text which had by all 
odds the wider sway, continued to be used. I spoke above 
of all this Syrian revision as perhaps done about the middle 
of the third century. Nevertheless, it is not altogether im- 
possible that it was done later than that, towards the end of 
the century. The name of Lucian, who died as a martyr in the 
year 312, has been mentioned in connection with the revision 



500 TPIE TEXT 

of the text. Perhaps it was he who made the revision of which 
I have just spoken. 



The Second Syrian Revision; 

or, 

The Official Text. 

As the fourth century moved on, there befell the Church a 
great change. The conversion of Constantine brought into 
Christianity the element of authority in a totally new sense, and 
that in two ways. On the one hand, this authority was not, like 
all sympathetic authority up to that time, an ecclesiastical 
authority, but a civil authority. To-day that would make a great 
difference in the valuation of that authority, and in the respect 
paid to it or not paid to it. At that time it made little difference, 
save in a favourable direction. The Christians were only too 
glad to forget the persecutions, and were ready to welcome in 
obedience the Christian emperor. And, on the other hand, this 
authority was of wide domain. Until then the bishop had been 
the highest official for them. Single bishops sometimes attained 
to a wider authority by courtesy, reverence, and affection, as we 
saw in the case of Dionysius of Corinth. But here we have the 
emperor. Now the Christians have in Constantinople a new 
hold, and they are conversely under a new authority. This new 
authority attached to the new centre gives to Christianity a 
new impulse. It does not concern us here whether this novelty 
was a blessing or a curse in general. We have to do with its 
influence upon the text. 

The Greek revision of the text of the New Testament of 
which we have just spoken, appears to have failed to impress 
itself upon distant circles, upon Christian churches far from 
Antioch, though it doubtless was sometimes copied for various 
churches. So long as this revision did not prevail, the tendency 
of its existence was to make matters worse. If it did not replace 
or supplant the other texts, it made a fourth text that only 
increased the confusion. 

Now, however, the Church grows and flourishes in the sun- 
shine of imperial favour. The Council of Nice tends to make 
it feel its oneness and its power. It was probably towards the 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— OFFICIAL TEXT 501 

middle of the fourth century that the text was again revised, 
and again at Antioch. For this revision, Antioch had become 
all the more probable, appropriate, and practically desirable be- 
cause of its geographical nearness to, and because of its political 
as well as religious connection with, Constantinople. We do not 
need to discuss at length the possibilities and the probabilities 
of the process of revision at this time, for they do not differ 
materially from the conditions considered on the occasion of 
that preceding revision, save in so far that a revised Greek text, 
the work of that former revision, was a fourth source of material. 

This revision contributed still further to make the text of the 
New Testament complete in the sense that the reviser packed 
into it all the words of the preceding texts that he could well 
stow away in it. At the same time it made the text still smoother 
and weaker. The text reached herewith, in this Church text, its 
greatest distance from the original text. This text is the worst 
text in existence. But it was born under a lucky constellation. 
Now, there was a central authority that extended farther than any 
bishopric. And the bishops who enveloped themselves in this 
authority seem to have at once taken hold of this new revision 
and to have spread it broadcast. Now, the manuscripts of the 
older texts vanish, just as the Syrian manuscripts vanished when 
their text had been revised at that earlier period. Therefore 
we may term this last and worst of texts the Official Text. 

Here the history of the Greek text in the manuscripts closes. 
I say history in the pragmatic sense. From this time onwards 
the Greek text of the New Testament, having been reduced to 
its lowest estate, simply lived along. It had no more experiences 
than an oyster has in its rocky bed. History for the Greek text 
begins again when Fell and Mill and Bentley and Bengel and 
Wettstein and Griesbach and Hug and Lachmann and Tischen- 
dorf and Tregelles and Westcott and Hort draw it forth from the 
Slough of Despond and place it upon the high road leading 
to its pristine purity. That worst text is, so far as the Textus 
Receptus, the Received Text, is made fast and sure in Estienne's 
and the Elzevir Texts, the text for which so many theologians 
fought for long years. If Lachmann had taken that, instead of 
doing the good critical work that he did do, he would have had the 
text of the fourth century at which he in name aimed his efforts. 



502 THE TEXT 



Origin of Classes of Texts. 

We can now return to a matter that has already been briefly 
mentioned, but which we are now prepared to treat more fully. 
I refer to the way in which classes of texts have arisen in the 
New Testament. In old days it was the custom to say and to 
believe that the classes of texts in the New Testament arose 
from the errors of scribes, that they were the usual classes known 
in classical philology, and that intentional change had nothing to 
do with them. It has more than once been asserted, that aside 
from an exceedingly small number of possibly intentional changes, 
perhaps two or three, the New Testament enjoyed the pre- 
eminence of having a text that no one had changed of set 
purpose, that the will of man had as good as not entered into 
the realm of this textual treasure. 

Having passed by the classes of the text in rapid review, 
we are in a position now to say that precisely the contrary is 
the case. It is true that the scribes who copied the manu- 
scripts of the New Testament remained men and made their 
usual mistakes. And it is likewise true that we can repeatedly 
with their errors prove the existence of groups of manuscripts, 
just as in the documents for the works of classical authors. 
But with the thousands of manuscripts at our command, such 
groups are in the textual criticism of the New Testament a 
very subsidiary matter. We are glad to observe them and to 
apply them as a means of reducing the number of manuscripts in 
our hands, by leading half a dozen manuscripts back to their 
one source. For determining the text they are much too far from 
the centre of observation. These groups are not formed by acts 
of intention, but by unintentional mistakes. These groups have 
not the least in the world to do with the formation of the four 
or five classes of text of which we have here treated. 

In the face of all that has been repeated for many years, the 
classes of which we have spoken have nothing to do with 
unintentional change. They are the results of the purpose of 
many persons. Advancing from the Original Text we come first 
of all to the Re- Wrought Text, and see in it the results of the 
action of the wills of various men at various times in various 
countries. These men did not just by accident, without seeing 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— ORIGIN OF CLASSES 503 

what they were about, add here a word and there a word. 
They had their eyes open and their heads clear, and they 
wished to make the text before them better, and to their way 
of thinking they did make it better. What they did they willed 
to do. Precisely the same was the case with the scholars who 
prepared the Polished Text. They filed here and altered there, 
and used their philological acumen in order to secure the best 
results. It was all the work of will, not of accident. It is not 
necessary to follow up the two texts that were last produced. 
For they were directly the product, as we saw, of the effort to 
make things better. The fact that the chance mistakes of the 
scribes do not cause classes of this kind is then made clear by 
a view of the history of the texts. 

A mathematician might make for us some equations or solve 
some problems for us. If the unintentional errors of the early 
Christians produced within a century or a century and a half 
the text we name the Re-Wrought Text, and if further un- 
intentional errors in a further century and a half produced the 
Official Text, what must unintentional errors have produced in 
the way of change, disorder, and confusion in the course of the 
following eleven centuries before the text of the New Testa- 
ment was printed? And then we perceive that at the end of 
the eleven centuries the text is to all intents and purposes 
precisely where it was and in the condition in which it was 
at the beginning of the eleven centuries. It is of no avail to 
say that Greek had become a "dead" language, and that the 
scribes therefore were ignorant and kept slavishly to their text 
during the eleven centuries. In the first place, the Greek 
language is not yet dead, as anyone can settle for himself by 
a journey from Messina, or Trieste, around the Mediterranean, 
including the yEgean and the Black Sea, to Alexandria. In the 
second place, the " death " of the language and the ignorance of 
scribes would only have heightened, in no case lessened, the 
number, the pernicious effect, and the class-making influence 
of unintentional mistakes. 

What unintentional errors and faults did not do in eleven 
centuries they certainly could not have done in either one of 
the periods of a century and a half before the eleven centuries. 
The classes of text in the New Testament are solely the result 
of arbitrary, that is, willed action. 



504 THE TEXT 

If those who wish to find in the history of the New Testa- 
ment text excellent care, and who in pursuance of that wish 
have urged the lack of wilful change, would formulate their 
statement more guardedly, there would be less difficulty in ac- 
cepting their contention. There are a few cases in the New 
Testament in which, as we may see, for example, in John 7 8 , 
changes have been made for a definite purpose which we might 
call dogmatical or even apologetical. In the verse mentioned 
Jesus says : " I go not up to this feast," using the phrase which 
was rendered in Greek by ovk dva^aLvw. Some good Christian in 
early times, reading this and finding two verses later that Jesus 
actually did go up to that feast, said to himself apparently : " That 
cannot be. Jesus cannot have said that He was not going up 
to the feast. He can only have said that He did not intend 
to go at that moment. He must have left room open for His 
later going up to Jerusalem." And therefore this Christian wrote 
over the ovk or on the margin beside ovk the word ovtto), "not 
yet," and caused Jesus to say : " I am not going up to this feast 
yet." There are, in my opinion, not many cases of this kind in 
the New Testament. And if therefore those who have wished to 
exclude intentional change altogether from the fortunes of the 
text of the New Testament would but limit their statement to 
the observation that changes of such a dogmatical or apologeti- 
cal character are rare in that text, it would not be hard to agree 
with them. 

Pondering over the presentation of the course of the history 
of the text here given, it would be possible for a thinking, an 
active mind to ask what the explanation is for the circumstance 
that four or five classes of text were made during the first four 
centuries,. or about within the years from 100 to 350, and that 
absolutely none were thereafter produced. The answer is not far 
to seek. Each of those classes of the text had its reason for 
being made. The Re-Wrought Text applied the then still 
flourishing written and oral tradition of the apostolic age to the 
enriching and the embellishing of the text. The Polished Text 
sought to remove the comparative uncouthness of the primitive 
form for polite ears. And the two revisions which culminated 
in the Official Text had for their purpose the unifying of the 
contradictory or varying forms of the text, as well as the simplify- 
ing and smoothing off of its language. Everyone of these reasons 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— ORIGIN OF CLASSES 505 

attaches to an early date in the life of, or in the development of, 
a text. No such reason could arise to demand a new class of 
text, after the whole Greek Church had at the beck of authority 
acquiesced in the weak and poor text of the revision of the 
fourth century. It was left for the impulse of modern science to 
discover by a long series of efforts the probable sources and 
causes and courses of the movements in and changes in the 
text, and to endeavour by reversing the wheel of time to undo 
the false development, and to reach in skilful unravelling of the 
lines of tradition the Original Text. 

Should this action of modern science prove even but to 
a certain extent successful, it will have great value. If the 
researches into the earlier years of Christianity receive in the 
future as in the past, as I confidently expect, many new docu- 
ments for the period from 90 to 200 a.d., and if these documents 
sustain the theory as to the early facts of the text that Westcott 
and Hort framed, then we shall be able to develop it in a more 
complete manner, particularly in the direction of new editions of 
the early writers. I have written : " sustain the theory." That 
does not mean that I look for, or that Westcott and Hort looked 
for, a precise corroboration of every suggestion in, of every rami- 
fication of, their hypothesis. What they gave us was a hypothesis 
to work upon, the best they then could make. Had they lived 
they would have modified the hypothesis with new discoveries. 
We must modify it for them, when the new discoveries come. 
The sustaining of their theory to which I allude is then a general 
one, and not necessarily one that goes into all details. 

So far as I can judge of a number of the efforts that have 
been made since the year 1881 to do something new in the field 
of textual criticism, these efforts have laboured under three dis- 
advantages which have impaired their effect or have rendered 
them comparatively fruitless. 

In the first place, these efforts were partial, not general. 
That was not singular. The great knowledge of the Church 
writers and of the ins and outs of Christian literature that 
Westcott and Hort possessed cannot be matched in a couple 
of years of desultory reading that dips here or there into the 
field. It was further not singular, because these efforts were 
sometimes the happy thoughts of specialists in limited fields who 
had neither inclination nor time to occupy themselves with the 



506 THE TEXT 

whole subject. Yet precisely such researches, such contributions 
of men who were masters of a circumscribed domain, were and 
remain desirable. 

But in the second place, if I do not err, these partial efforts, 
every one of which, like every careful bit of work in any depart- 
ment, was welcome, failed partly to have the desired effect because 
of their antagonistic attitude over against the hypothesis which 
Westcott and Hort had presented. To be very plain, the 
scholars who made these partial researches did not say : " I 
have observed these facts. Let us see whether we can range 
them under the given theory or whether they demand a change 
in the theory." On the contrary, they said: "This theory is 
all wrong. For I have observed here a trifle which I cannot 
make square with the theory." 

And in the third place, this antagonism against the theory 
and the failure to recognise the coincidence between the newly 
found facts and the theory has, I think, in several instances been 
due to an imperfect conception of the theory. The hypothesis 
of Westcott and Hort is given in Hort's book, the introductory 
volume to their edition, in an exceedingly cautious manner, so 
that it is not easy, I think, for a hurried reader to be sure of their 
full intention. I remember one page which I wished to have 
made more clear, but which seemed to the editor to leave nothing 
to be desired. At a later date, after the book had been issued, 
I made two columns on a page of paper and wrote in one 
column the text of the given paragraph. In the other column 
I re-wrote the sense in my own words up to the point at which I 
could not tell what to write. Then the editor gave me the clue. 
I refer to this simply to show that in a field that contains so 
many and such different parts a theory dealing with the whole 
may fail to be easy of comprehension for one whose time does 
not allow him to consider it at length. This refers, as is evident, 
to those who have gained their knowledge of the theory from 
Hort's own book. 

Apparently, however, some have taken their view of the 
theory from brief, tabular statements made about it. It is there- 
fore desirable to remind scholars of Hort's thoughts upon this 
subject. I had asked him, urged him, to make in his volume 
a short and skeleton-like review of what the two editors aimed 
at, and of the facts of early textual history as they presented 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT 507 

themselves to the eyes of the editors, He replied that he, 
and I think Westcott also, had tried to make such a summary 
presentation, but had not succeeded. This was, I think, to a 
large extent the result of their great knowledge and their great 
modesty. Every curt, combining, crystallising sentence that 
they formulated met at once in their brains such a multitude 
of contrary or divergent considerations as to be impossible for 
them. It is the man who knows little who is "absolutely 
certain." He does not know the limits of his knowledge. I 
succeeded in getting from them what I suppose to be the only 
existing brief, authentic exposition of their theory. But even this 
short statement, this authentic one, can in no wise replace the 
study of their book for anyone who makes the most distant 
pretensions to form a judgment as to the correctness or the 
faultiness or the worthlessness of their theory. If those who 
combat the hypothesis of Westcott and Hort would first be 
willing to take the pains to read Hort's book carefully, we should 
less frequently find them urging as new objections to that 
hypothesis considerations which Westcott and Hort themselves 
presented to the public. 

We have dwelt long enough upon the theory of the origin 
and early history of the text. No one can tell how long it will 
be before we are sure of the correctness of that theory, or are 
able to replace it by a better one. In the meantime the Church, 
Christianity, Christian theologians need a Greek New Testament. 
There is no danger of anyone's trying to stop all preaching until 
the text of the New Testament is finally settled. That would be 
absurd. For preaching did not begin with the New Testament. 
Preaching, vivid work in the Church, preceded by years the 
"New Testament. And no one can venture to say that the 
theological study of the New Testament must halt until the text 
has been made absolutely perfect. Theology must be moving 
on with its other tasks as well as with those in textual criticism. 
We are bound to make to-day the best text we can, and to use 
that text diligently and undoubtingly. If that be the case, 
Christians have a right to ask textual critics whether the text 
that can be determined to-day is in the main a reliable text. 

We can divide the consideration of this thought into two parts, 
a more negative and a more positive one. It is on the one hand 
of first importance for Christian theologians to be assured that 



508 THE TEXT 

what they have before them in the New Testament is really in the 
main New Testament, really is a part of the books to which it 
is alleged to belong. Should we be compelled when commenting 
upon the text of the New Testament, or when trying to draw 
from its pages arguments for our views, or when seeking comfort 
and counsel in it — should we be compelled at every instant to 
bear in mind the possibility that the whole paragraph upon which 
we have fixed our thoughts might as a matter of fact not be a 
part of the book in which it stood, might be a spurious inter- 
polation, our thoughts would be confused and lamed. It is there- 
fore of cardinal importance that textual criticism place before 
Christians one result of the work of the past two centuries. That 
result is, that we have no ground for assuming that, no ground to 
suspect that, no ground to fear that any large sections that we 
consider to-day to be a part of the text of the New Testament 
will ever be proved not to belong to it. Textual criticism has 
determined, I think finally and irrevocably, that three passages 
form no part of the text. Aside from an omission or two of 
verses that have crept in from parallel passages and have no 
interest for us, there are three other passages, of not more than 
two verses each, that are probably spurious. Aside from these, 
I think we may say that the text of the New Testament is in 
the main assured. We have succeeded in gaining such a control 
of the realm of testimony and such a comprehensive view of it, 
that surprises in this direction seem to be excluded. Textual 
criticism will not again be called upon to decide whether a 
whole series of verses belong to a New Testament book or not. 
That is the way in which the case presents itself to us to-day. Are 
we deceived, will textual criticism at some future day have to 
cut out parts of, say Second Corinthians, and recombine the 
remnants, — I at least do not now know that, nor do I in the 
least anticipate it. In this respect, in respect to the future 
excision of larger portions of the text, the New Testament 
is safe. 

Interesting Passages. — First John 5 7 * 8 . 

It will not be uninteresting to cast a glance at the passages 
referred to, to the three that beyond all doubt form no part of 
the New Testament, and to the other three that probably do not 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— I JOHN 5 7 - 8 509 

belong to it. They are for the most part of a character foreign 
to the rest of the text, so that we can easily let them go. The 
one passage in the New Testament of our ancestors which had 
not the slightest claim to a place in it was the passage, to which 
I alluded a while back, in the First Epistle of John. In First 
John 5 7 - 8 the text of the New Testament reads: "For there 
are three that bear witness, the spirit and the water and the 
blood, and the three are one." There is a corrupt Latin text 
which says : " There are three that bear witness on earth, the 
spirit, water, and blood, and these three are one in Christ Jesus. 
And there are three that speak testimony in heaven, the Father, 
the Word, and the Spirit." That corrupt text put in the words 
" in earth " and " in Christ Jesus " and the whole sentence about 
the heavenly witnesses. Now, these words have not the least 
shadow of a right to a place in the text of the New Testament. 
We may begin with the latest treatment of the question. Karl 
Kiinstle argues with great learning and apparently with great 
justice that this passage is to be attributed to Priscillian. Let 
me observe by way of parenthesis that the passage has a number 
of quite different forms. Priscillian was a heretical Spanish 
bishop of the fourth century. It is one of the curious contrasts 
of life and history that this text should be traced back to this 
heretic. Since the printing of the New Testament, and Erasmus' 
fatal promise to insert the verse if it should be found in a Greek 
manuscript, it has been the habit of the friends of the verse to 
claim it as the great proof-text of the New Testament for the 
doctrine of the Trinity. What would Priscillian say to that ! 
For Priscillian did not hold to the doctrine of the Trinity. He 
was very much of a Manichaean. His views were, we may say, 
a Gnostic Dualism. He taught not pantheism, but Pan-Christism. 
And the text that came from him is claimed for the Trinity. 
That is very odd. But it does not belong in the New Testament, 
as we have said. 

It has been said to be in three Greek manuscripts. Now, 
one of the three is that Codex Montfortianus at Dublin, of 
which I spoke above (see page 374). The two points to be 
emphasised about it are, in the first place, that the Greek 
text here was changed so as to conform to the Latin text of 
the passage ; and in the second place, that the Epistles in this 
manuscript were written about the time at which Erasmus, after 



5IO THE TEXT 

printing two editions of his Greek New Testament without the 
verse, had promised to put the verse in if it were found in 
a Greek manuscript. Thus far no positive proof thereof has 
been found, but it is in every way probable that this copy of the 
Epistles was written, and that these words were here put in, in 
less correct or less fitting Greek as drawn from the Latin, for the 
purpose of forcing Erasmus to print the verses, as he then did. 
In no case has this manuscript of the sixteenth century a particle 
of value for the Greek text in general, let alone for a verse which 
its scribe evidently took from the Latin. 

The second Greek manuscript which is cited for these three 
heavenly witnesses is a manuscript of the fourteenth century in 
the Vatican Library at Rome. We can here see plainly that 
the words are taken from the Latin. The manuscript is in two 
columns. Here the left-hand column is Latin and the right- 
hand Greek, and the text in the two languages corresponds 
as nearly as may be line for line. Therefore the scribe has 
translated the Latin words for those lines into Greek. He 
agrees with the man who made the bad translation in the Codex 
Montfortianus in leaving out the article in the case of the 
heavenly witnesses, but he gives it, as he will have found it in 
his Greek text, for the witnesses on earth. The scribe of the 
Montfortianus left it out there too. But the translation is a 
different one. 

And finally, the third Greek manuscript is one at Naples, 
which, however, has the usual Greek text without the heavenly 
witnesses. Some modern hand has written the heavenly wit- 
nesses on the margin. So we see that these three alleged 
witnesses in favour of the three heavenly witnesses prove to 
be nothing but witnesses against the authenticity of the text. 
The facts which I have here stated are nothing new. Yet a 
Roman Catholic edition of the Greek New Testament which 
claims to be constituted according to the ancient manuscripts 
has just been issued, for I think the third time, containing this 
verse without note or comment and with no allusion to it in 
the critical notes. Such an edition is insupportable when we 
consider the learning of the Roman Catholic theologians. Why, 
it is precisely a Roman Catholic professor of theology who has 
shown that these words come from a heretic. And nevertheless 
Brandscheid ventured to publish them as good scripture with 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— MARK l6 9 " 20 511 

episcopal approbation. No one can to-day complain that textual 
criticism has done wrong in thrusting these spurious words out 
of the text of the New Testament. The pity is only that they 
have been allowed for so long a time to usurp a place upon 
the pages of the New Testament, and that a theologian could in 
the twentieth century still be found so devoid of critical insight 
as to publish them as a part of the sacred text. 



Mark 16 9 - 20 . 

Another passage that textual criticism has shown to have no 
right to a place in the text of the New Testament is the close of 
the Gospel according to Mark as it stands in the common 
editions. Mark i6 9-20 is neither part nor parcel of that Gospel. 
Many a question suggests itself to the textual critic when he looks 
at these verses. We cannot tell what happened to this Gospel. 
What we now have left of the original Gospel stops off short 
with the Greek word yap, " for " : " For they were afraid." The 
first supposition would appear to be that Mark had been 
interrupted in writing, but on second thoughts we cannot approve 
of that view. Mark doubtless lived longer, and could have con- 
tinued and closed his book again before publishing it. Another 
supposition would be that the last sentence we have of the 
original was at the foot of one of the columns towards the end 
of the roll, and that the last columns had been lost from the 
first or from a very early copy, and that all subsequent copies 
came from the imperfect volume. 

And taking up the other side, the question arises, whence the 
present verses 9 " 20 came. A few years ago no one could answer 
that question. Now we can answer it, for Frederick Cornwallis 
Conybeare found an old Armenian manuscript that named these 
verses as from the Presbyter Aristion, and thus far no good reason 
has been found for doubting his authorship. Aristion is called 
by Papias a disciple of the Lord, and his words are every whit as 
good as Mark's words. But they do not belong here. They are 
not a part of the New Testament, and they were probably added 
at this ninth verse in Asia Minor at the close of the first or the 
beginning of the second century. It has been suggested that 
the real end of Mark was purposely cut off by a man who did 



512 THE TEXT 

not like it, and who chose to replace it by the passage from 
Aristion. That does not seem to me to be probable, and for 
a very commonplace practical reason. If a chance critic should 
have cut away the end and replaced it thus, one of two things 
would have happened. Either we should have had manuscripts 
with the proper ending, the manuscripts, that is to say, which that 
critic could not reach, and the manuscripts which we have with 
this Aristion ending ; or, if the critic had all in his hand, we 
should only have had manuscripts with this Aristion ending. 

Now neither of these things is the actual case. We have 
very old manuscripts which close blankly with that word yap, as 
if their scribes had never thought or heard of anything after it. 
Then, of course, we have manuscripts with this common Aristion 
ending. And — here is the still stranger thing, but as it seems to 
me the proof that the Gospel was wandering about without a 
close — we have in the manuscripts a totally different ending. A 
manuscript I found at Mount Athos twenty years ago continues 
after the ydp : " And all the things announced to those about 
Peter briefly, they spread abroad. And after that Jesus also 
Himself appeared from east, and up to west He sent out by them 
the sacred and incorrupted preaching of the eternal salvation. 
Amen. And this also is found after the ' For they were afraid,' " 
and then follows the Aristion ending. Now, that seems to me 
to show conclusively the same thing that our old manuscripts 
show, namely, that this Gospel was spread abroad in ancient 
times without the proper ending. Seeing the wide prevalence 
of the Gospel without an ending or with one of the false endings, 
the necessary conclusion is that the curtailing took place at an 
extremely early date. I regard it nevertheless as one of the 
possibilities of future finds that we receive this Gospel with its 
own authentic finish. Mark has been connected with Alexandria. 
May Grenfell and Hunt add to their numerous gifts the close 
of the original Mark from an Egyptian papyrus. 

What I said a moment ago must, however, now be repeated 
and emphasised. It sometimes seems to Christian laymen as if 
textual critics warred upon the New Testament. If the textual 
critics did not like the New Testament they would surely find no 
difficulty in discovering other objects of study that they liked. 
They work upon the New Testament because it appears to them 
to be in an especial manner worthy of their highest efforts. Here 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— JOHN ? 53 -8 u 513 

is a case. These closing verses of Mark positively do not belong 
to this Gospel, positively have no right to be in the New Testa- 
ment. If I said that they did belong to this Gospel I should speak 
as direct an untruth as if I should insist upon it that Moscow was 
a city in Spain. The kind of assertion would be different, the 
untruth would be equal or even greater. But in spite of all that, 
I insist upon the words above. These words of Aristion's are as 
good as or, if you please, better than Mark's words ; for all that 
they are not a part of Mark's Gospel. A Christian may read, 
enjoy, ponder them, and be thankful for them as much as he 
pleases. The textual critic will in no wise hinder him. The 
critic has but to study the question of belonging or not belonging 
to the text. No one thing in reference to the Gospel of Mark 
could afford the textual critic greater pleasure than the finding 
of the words with which Mark continued the text after yap and 
finished his Gospel. 

John 7 53 -8« 

The third of the passages that are beyond all doubt proven 
not to belong to the New Testament is just about of the same 
length as the verses Mark 16 9 " 20 , or about of one hundred and 
sixty-six words, varying according to the readings chosen. I 
refer to John 7 53 -8 n , the story of the Adulteress, a story that 
has for centuries been a comfort to repentant sinners, whether 
men or women, and whatever the sin was of which they had 
been guilty. I do not doubt that this story is a true story, 
and that it has exercised its charm in oral and then in written 
tradition since the day on which the woman stood before Jesus. 
The only reason I could think of for questioning its historical 
accuracy is the circumstance that no one of the four evangelists 
relates it. And yet we must remember how much there was to 
be told. The world itself would not have contained the books 
if all were to have been written down. And our view of the most 
beautiful or the most striking or the most touching scene may 
in some cases be different from that of the evangelists. This 
story, these verses, have had a most singular fate in the life of 
Christianity, so that one scarcely knows where to begin or where 
to end about them. The verses 7 53 and 8 1 , and in part 8 2 , have 
to a great extent been kept separate from the verses 8 2 or 3 to n , 
33 



514 THE TEXT 

seeing that the lesson containing this story usually began with 
8 2 or 3 . It is further to be observed that there is a certain 
likeness between the verses 7 53 -8 2 and Luke 2i 37 - 38 , which per- 
haps was one reason for the insertion of the story at the latter 
point in a group of Calabrian manuscripts. 

In one respect there seems to be a similarity in the textual 
fortunes of this section and of the book of Revelation. The great 
favour that that book found in the eyes of the earliest Church led, 
I think, to its being at that time altered in its text more than any 
other book of the whole New Testament. This section about the 
Adulteress was probably the most read single section in the whole 
history of the Church. We learn from Eusebius that it was in the 
Gospel according to the Hebrews. Yet his reference to its being 
there seems to indicate that that was but one of the places in 
which it was found. If I am not mistaken, there are in the 
whole New Testament no other dozen verses that exhibit such 
a manifold variation of reading. It is a section that in reference 
to its textual history and textual character stands totally alone. 
This multifariousness of form I am inclined to connect with its 
having been so very often read, and especially at a very early 
time. It would, I confess also, be possible to argue that its 
readings were the more readily changed because it often stood 
outside of the frame of the Gospel. Many a hand seems to have 
changed trifles in the wording here and there. 

One of the forms of change in the eighth and ninth verses 
makes the narrative in the highest degree dramatic, and places 
what we might call the possibilities of the scene in the most living 
and moving manner before our eyes. It is scarcely conceivable 
,that this peculiar change of which I am speaking go back to a 
more correct form of the Aramaic oral tradition. It is therefore 
probably a late invention. It is found chiefly in manuscripts now 
on Mount Athos, and may have started there. This most radical 
of all the changes is the following. At the close of the eighth 
verse, when Jesus again turns away from the Pharisees and again 
writes on the ground, we are told what He wrote. For the 
sentence is made to say : He wrote upon the ground the sins 
of each single one of them. Of course, that is aimed at these 
accusing Pharisees. We see the people crowding around Jesus. 
In the midst of the group are a half a dozen or more scribes and 
Pharisees, who have brought the woman to Jesus and have stated 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— JOHN 7 53 -8 n 5 1 5 

her sin. They think to lay a snare for Him. They have no fear 
for themselves. The ninth verse completes the change that 
turns the tables upon the Pharisees. It does not read : And 
they when they heard it. It reads : And they when they read 
it. The Pharisees accused the woman. Jesus wrote on the 
ground, affecting not to hear them, as also an old reading 
suggests. They badger Him until He looks up at them and 
curtly says : He that is without sin among you let him first cast 
a stone at her. And then He stoops down and again writes 
upon the ground. What is He writing there? The foremost 
Pharisee is of course the oldest. It was his right to be in front. 
He looks down at the sand at the word that Jesus has just 
written, and sees there the name of a great sin that he has 
done, but which he thinks is known to no one. Like a flash 
his conscience wakens. Verse ninth says : And they, when they 
read it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, 
beginning from the eldest unto the last. This oldest Pharisee 
has turned and edged his way out of the crowd as fast as he 
could. Jesus has swept His hand across the sand to smoothe 
it over, and has again written something. This word the next 
Pharisee reads, and recognising a hidden sin of his own he too 
flees. And thus it goes on till the accusers are all away. And 
Jesus is left alone with the woman in the centre of the group of 
people. Jesus looks up at her and asks her — we can hear the 
scathing irony of the words — Where are they? Doth no man 
condemn thee ? Yes, indeed, He may well ask where they are. 
They have gone off, thinking of their own sins. Their own 
thoughts are now accusing and perhaps weakly excusing them, 
but chiefly condemning them. And the woman answers : No 
man, Lord. And Jesus said : Neither do I condemn thee. Go 
thy way, and from henceforth sin no more. That is a wonderful 
scene. The whole process might have taken place precisely as 
this form of the text places it before our eyes. But thus far the 
witnesses for that word "read" are not important enough to 
admit of our putting it intothe text instead of "heard." 

In the Greek Church this section was used as the lesson for 
people who repented and confessed their sins, whether men or 
women, and it is not hard to imagine how often it must have 
been read, and what grateful ears it fell upon. It was read and 
re-read, but it was very rarely found at this place in the Gospel 



5 16 THE TEXT 

of John. In many manuscripts it stands after the end of John 
as an extra piece all by itself. There is an interesting external 
proof that it was not a part of the original Gospel. We spoke 
some time ago of the chapters in the Gospels, the large chapters 
with their headings. These large chapters call attention to every 
remarkable narrative in the text, and it is a matter of course that 
if the story of the Adulteress had been in John it would have 
formed a chapter and had its heading. But it is very rarely 
tound in the list of the chapters of John. There are eighteen 
chapters in John in almost all the manuscripts, and the tenth 
chapter is "about the man blind from birth." Even in many of 
the manuscripts in which the section has been inserted into the 
Gospel the list of the eighteen chapters remains as usual. Then 
in a number of copies the scribes have felt that that was not 
fitting, have thought that the story must appear also in the 
chapter list, and they have put it in as chapter tenth "about 
the Adulteress," thus making in all nineteen chapters. There it 
would have been from the first had it been part of the Gospel, 
and its failure to appear there proves that it was not in the 
Gospel. Thus such a thing as a list of chapters can, after all, 
tell us something of importance for the text. 

I have said that this section is not found in a large number of 
manuscripts. It is the only section which in no small number of 
manuscripts has been put into the text by force. In many a copy 
it has been merely added, often in a small hand, on the margin. 
But in many, when we reach that point in the Gospel, we see 
of a sudden two newer leaves, written also of course in a newer 
hand. The moment such leaves appear the textual critic knows 
what is up. The manuscript did not originally contain the story 
of the Adulteress. Thereupon the owner of the manuscript tore 
or cut out the leaf upon which the surrounding verses were 
written and put in two new leaves, on which he wrote those 
surrounding verses which he had removed, and in the midst of 
them the section about the Adulteress. There is no help for it. 
These verses do not belong to the Gospel of John. They form 
no part of the New Testament. That is, however, no reason 
why we should not gladly read them. In the case of Mark 16 920 
we have learned from whom the verse came — from Aristion. 
In the case of this section we do not know from whom it came. 
But it may well be older, not younger, than the Gospel of John. 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— MK l6 p ' 20 5 17 

Textual criticism knows that it is not, however, a proper part of 
that Gospel. 

We have said that neither Mark i6 9 ~ 20 nor John 7 53 -8 n belongs 
to the New Testament. The problem at once arises, what 
should be done with these verses ? Here are two sections, each 
about of a hundred and sixty-six words, which have almost from 
the outset been more or less closely joined to the New Testa- 
ment. One of them is from a disciple of Jesus named Aristion ; 
the other is, I take it, also originally from a disciple of Jesus, 
though I do not know his name. Textual criticism having now 
shown that neither the one nor the other of the two is by rights 
a part of the New Testament, some persons might think that the 
only proper conclusion would be to cast them both altogether 
away, not to allow them to appear in the New Testament in any 
form. Should that be done, should they no longer be printed 
in the New Testament, should they be left to casual collections 
of early Christian writings, the one, the Aristion passage, would 
probably soon be forgotten. That would be of less consequence, 
owing to the fact that its contents are pretty much all in our 
hands in other passages. The other passage, the story of the 
Adulteress, would not be forgotten. It would, however, on the 
one hand certainly fail to be seen so often, fail to be read so 
often as it is now read in the New Testament ; and on the other 
hand, it would in all likelihood be the object of many changes 
and of many interpolations in the course of time. 

It seems to me that these two passages have a thoroughly 
different standing from the first passage mentioned, 1 John 5 7 - 8 . 
That pas-age never was a part of the Greek New Testament, and 
should be omitted from it as if Erasmus had never been brought 
to print it. It should be left out without word or sign that any false 
words ever had been there. But these two passages should on 
the contrary remain in the New Testament. Should the real end of 
Mark some day be found, it might then be well to let the present 
verses 1 6 9 " 20 go. Yet even then, as I think should be the method 
of proceeding now, these lines from Aristion might be printed 
after the Gospel as the long-used close of it. It is only desirable 
that they should be distinctly separated from 16 8 . There should 
be a slight space between verse eighth and verse ninth, and the 
passage should be in brackets and have Arist ion's name attached 
to it. It is very convenient that this passage takes its place in 



5 18 THE TEXT 

the course of nature at the end of the Gospel where it occasions 
no difficulty. As for the story of the Adulteress, three courses 
are open. It could be left in the text, but be separated from the 
rest by a gap before and after it, and by double brackets. This 
does not seem to me to be advisable. It could be placed at the 
foot of the page on which John 7 53 occurs, as if it were a note. 
It seems to me, however, that the best way of all to dispose of 
it would be to follow some of the manuscripts and to print it 
after the close of the Gospel of John as a separate piece. It 
could then be found even more readily than now. These are 
the three passages about which textual criticism gives us clear 
and definite information. 



Luke 2 2 43,44 . 

The three passages that probably should be left out, but 
about which the verdict of textual criticism is not so clear as in 
the three passages named above, are the following. In Luke 
22 43. 44 the vision of the angel and the narrative touching bloody 
sweat are lacking in some documents, and are in others marked 
as spurious. They should at least be placed in brackets or be 
put on the margin. There is in that passage perhaps an element 
of exaggeration or of fable that helps condemn it. In the next 
passage there is nothing of that kind, but only the plainest every- 
day matter of fact. 

Matthew i6 2,3 . 

It is in Matthew i6 2 - 3 : "When it is evening ye say: Fair 
weather. For the sky is growing red. And in the morning : 
A storm to-day. For the sky is growing red and lowering. 
Ye know how to tell the face of the sky, but the signs of the 
times ye cannot." Nevertheless, so little reason there would 
seem to be to object to these words, the documents are against 
them. One would naturally ask, how the presence of such 
indifferent phrases could be accounted for if they were not 
genuine, if they had not been there from the first moment. 
For it is clear that we do not find such things, such phrases 
thrust in at other places in the New Testament. It is possible 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— LK 22 43 - u MT 1 6 2 - 3 JOH 5 3 - 4 5 1 9 

that Jesus spoke these words at some other time. The somewhat 
sarcastic turn, that they could tell what the weather will be, but 
not what the evident course of affairs would be, might easily have 
been used against the Pharisees. We could then suppose that 
some one who had heard these words from Jesus' lips, or who 
had caught them up from oral or even from some written tradition, 
placed them here as fitting nicely in where the Pharisees and 
Sadducees asked for a sign. We might even go so far in 
theorising as to conceive that Jesus actually said them at this 
time, but that the evangelist had not happened to have them, 
and that they were then supplied as just suggested. They 
probably should be omitted here as not a part of the original 
text. And we may freely say, that although they may have been 
spoken by Jesus, and although we should wish to preserve every 
thought uttered by Him, there is, nevertheless, nothing in these 
words that would make us greatly mourn their loss. They can 
be bracketed or put in a footnote. Our conception of Jesus and 
of His teaching will not be altered by the omission. 



John 5 s - 4 . 

The third passage reminds us of the verses in Luke 2 2 43,44 , 
for an angel comes in again. This is in the Gospel accord- 
ing to John 5 3, 4 . The words which represent the multitude 
that is seeking healing as waiting for an angel to trouble the 
water, and the narrative of the descent of the angel and of 
the surety that the first one who stepped into the pool after 
the troubling would be healed, no matter what disease he had, 
— those words are not supported by the best witnesses, and 
they should be placed in a footnote. It is less difficult to 
account for their presence than it was to account for the presence 
of the words in the passage last discussed. For it was quite 
natural for someone who read the Gospel at an early date to 
put in just such an explanation. We have so little inclination 
to-day to look to the intervention of angels, we are so much 
accustomed to think of God as Himself near us and Himself 
caring for us, that we should not regret at all to lose the story 
of the angel here. But in the early years of Christianity the 
case was different. Then, perhaps largely in connection with 



520 THE TEXT 

Persian fancies or as a result of some other heathen dreams about 
half-divine beings, whom we might call little gods, nothing was 
more natural or more attractive to the imagination than such a 
mediating personification of the power of God. 

With these three passages following upon the three discussed 
before them we have had a glimpse of the problems of textual 
criticism which have to deal with a greater number of words, 
and we have also learned that, aside from these passages, which 
are to be switched, shunted out of the direct lines of the text 
of the New Testament, there are no larger passages which are 
called in doubt textually. 

Romans o 5 . 

As a contrast to these more comprehensive or externally extens- 
ive problems, I shall touch next one of the questions which turns 
upon a single point, or we might in view of old Greek punctuation 
even say, upon the position of a single point as either at the upper 
part or the lower part of the last letter of the word after which it 
stood. The passage is in the Epistle to the Romans 9A In order 
to understand this passage we must go back to an old habit of 
the Jews. They had a great way of breaking out anywhere and 
everywhere with a doxology. We can see the same thing to-day 
if we take up a Jewish prayer-book. Indeed, we may find the 
same thing in more than one place in the New Testament. Nor 
is the history of the Church lacking in similar phenomena. 
Certainly thirty years ago in America it was not uncommon in 
some Church services to hear in the midst of a prayer or a sermon 
one Christian and another ejaculate loudly : " Glory be to God ! " 
—or "Hallelujah ! "—or "Blessed be the Lord !"— or " The Lord's 
name be praised ! " Paul was in the first verses here speaking of 
the glorious privileges of Israel. He was about to discuss Israel's 
sins, and he wished in advance to put on record his high respect 
for, and his devotion to his race. The Israelites have the 
adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the lawgiving, and 
the service, and the promises, and the fathers, and from them is 
Christ according to the flesh. In the third verse of the first 
chapter he had said that the Son of God was of the seed of 
David according to the flesh. And now, having summed up 
these glories of Israel, he says like a genuine Jew : " Thank God I " 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— ROM 9 5 , 1 5 AND 1 6 521 

That is to say, just as in Rom. i 25 , so here he declares God 
blersed : " God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen." 
The whole problem lies in the punctuation after the word "flesh." 
In my opinion there is no doubt that a full stop must follow that 
word. I have examined a great many manuscripts in many 
different libraries, and almost all of them have their largest stop 
after o-a/oxa, " flesh." 

Romans 15 and 16. 

Questions of textual criticism may have a bearing upon 
questions that belong partly to the criticism of the canon in a 
certain way and partly to the criticism of the writings. A very 
striking case to which we alluded above is found at the close of 
the Epistle to the Romans. In our editions the Epistle closes 
(16 25 " 27 ) with a doxology : "To him that is able to confirm you 
according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, 
according to the revelation of a mystery that had been kept 
silent from eternal times, but now has been revealed and also 
made known by prophetic writings according to the command of 
the eternal God unto all the nations unto obedience of faith, to 
the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory unto 
the ages of the ages. Amen." These majestic words make a 
fitting close for this grand Epistle. But do they belong here ? 
For in the documents we find that they are sometimes omitted. 
We shall see that they were omitted largely in Western docu- 
ments, but that the omission was known in the East. 

A slight, a passing testimony against these verses was offered 
by a Greek, who probably in the ninth century corrected the Greek 
text in the Codex Claromontanus, D paul . This Greek added the 
spiritus and accents to the text, but left them out in the case of 
words which he did not approve. Here he accented the first 
four words as it were by chance, and then, seeing what the text 
was, added no more. That was a Greek testimony in the 
West, for this Codex Claromontanus is a Western manuscript. 
The Greek text of the Codex Augiensis, F paul , also leaves these 
words out, but it leaves room for them in the Greek text here at 
the close of the sixteenth chapter. The other Greek - Latin 
manuscript of the Epistles of Paul, the Codex Bornerianus at 
Dresden, G paul , omits these words in like manner, but differs 



522 THE TEXT 

nevertheless from the Codex Augiensis, because it leaves room 
for them not here, but at the close of the fourteenth chapter, after 
14 23 , and that both in the Greek and in the Latin text. It is a 
curious circumstance, and shows how trifling a thing may throw 
light upon the history of a reading, that we find traces of this 
omission in Jerome's commentary to the Ephesians. He is 
discussing Eph. 3 5 , and refers to those who think that the 
prophets did not understand what they spoke, but made their 
utterances in an unwitting ecstasy. He declares that they use 
as a proof of their view not only Eph. 3 5 , but also this 
passage : "To him that is able," etc., which he says "is found in 
the most manuscripts to the Romans." When he says it is in 
the " most " manuscripts, he shows that in some this passage is 
not found. Thus we have word of the omission of this doxology 
in the fourth century. 

But we can go back to the second century, for Origen 
relates that Marcion took this passage out of Romans. We shall 
return to Origen's further testimony later. Here a word is 
necessary as to this statement. In spite of the fact that Origen 
lived not far from Marcion's day, and in spite of the fact that 
Marcion did use a sharp dissecting knife upon the books of 
the New Testament, we do not feel perfectly sure that the 
excision of the words, or, to speak more cautiously, that the 
absence of these words, was due to Marcion. The fact remains, 
however, that they were wanting in Marcion's manuscripts, and 
therefore in the manuscripts of his followers in the second 
century, scarcely a hundred years after Paul dictated the Epistle 
to Tertius, to Tertius if the sixteenth chapter belongs here. 

There certainly is, nevertheless, a fair amount of documentary 
evidence for the existence of these words as a part of this Epistle. 
But strangely enough this evidence is of a double nature. The 
French would say that it was cross-eyed. It looks towards two 
places at once. 

We saw a moment ago that the Codex Augiensis left a 
blank space for these words after Rom. 14 23 . Now there is an 
uncial manuscript of the ninth century in the Angelica Library 
at Rome which has these words at that point, after 14 23 and 
not after 16 24 . They are found at that same place in a couple 
of hundred of the younger manuscripts in small writing. The 
later Syrian translation also has them there. The Arabic trans- 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT— ROMANS 1 5 AND 1 6 523 

lation that was printed in the Paris polyglot has them there. 
They seem to have been in the same place in the Gothic trans- 
lation. And Origen, whom we named above, says that in some 
of his manuscripts these words stood after 14 23 . Origen's manu- 
scripts stretched, we may be sure, far back into the second 
century. Chrysostom, the golden-mouthed orator, had them 
there in his text, and so had Cyril of Alexandria of the early fifth 
century, and Theodoret an opponent of Cyril and a friend of 
Nestorius, and John Damascenus who died after the middle of 
the eighth century, and Theophylact the Bulgarian bishop, and 
Oecumenius. All these have this passage not at the end of the 
Epistle, but at the end of the fourteenth chapter. 

Then there are a few documents that have the words at both 
places, both at the close of the sixteenth and at the close of the 
fourteenth chapter. Even the great Codex Alexandrinus of the 
fifth century has them thus twice, and so has a ninth century 
large letter manuscript at St. Petersburg, P, and so have some 
younger manuscripts and some Armenian witnesses. 

And, finally, they stand at the end of the Epistle, as in our 
editions, in the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus both 
of the fourth century, in the Codex Ephraim of the fifth century, 
and in the first hand of the Codex Claromontanus of the sixth 
century. Besides that there are some small-letter manuscripts 
that have them there ; and Origen says that they were there in 
some manuscripts that were before him, which will have been 
doubtless of the second century. Three Old-Latin manuscripts 
have them there, and so does the Vulgate. And the Syrian 
translation joins with the Boheiric and the Ethiopic in placing 
them there. Origen and Ambrosiaster are of the same mind. 

I feel sure that many a reader will by this time begin to 
think that this passage is a piece of textual fireworks. The 
reason I have here called attention to it is because it seems to 
me to be uncommonly full of instruction. It involves all manner 
of questions, and insinuates itself into several departments of 
New Testament study. We may find a clue to the difficulties 
and intricacies of the whole matter in the possibilities of the 
earliest history of this Epistle, we might say, both in Paul's 
hands and in the hands of the church at Rome. The textual 
doubtfulness is probably a token of certain things that have left 
no other traces behind them. 



524 THE TEXT 

To try to put the matter plainly, we must, first, insist upon the 
purely theoretical character of the explanation that we have in 
mind, and then, second, speak definitely as if we knew all about it. 
If we look at the sixteenth chapter and see what a number of 
persons Paul salutes in it intimately, it will give us food for 
thought. Prisca or Priscilla and Aquila are old friends and fellow- 
workers of Paul. They had to leave Rome. They were with Paul 
at Corinth. They formed a theological training school then for 
Apollos at Ephesus, and sent him to Corinth to follow up Paul's 
work. Now they might by this time be again in Rome, but we 
knew of them last at Ephesus. Then comes Epainetus, " the first- 
fruits of Asia unto Christ." He might have been at Rome, but 
Asia is nearer Ephesus. Paul knows about Mariam's work for the 
Christians to whom he is writing. Andronicus and Junias were 
relatives and fellow- prisoners of Paul's, and were notable among 
the apostles, and had been Christians before Paul was. And the 
list runs on and on, and includes households or churches in 
special houses, as in Prisca's and Aquila's at the beginning, and 
even includes Rufus' mother, who had filled a mother's place 
towards the old bachelor Paul. Look at the list carefully. 
Write down the number of people mentioned, counting as few as 
may be admissible for the anonymous groups. We shall probably 
reach at least fifty people whom Paul knows intimately. And 
then reflect that the Epistle to the Romans is written to a church 
that Paul has not yet visited. It is hard to account for the fact 
that Paul should know so many people well in a still unvisited 
church, and almost as hard to understand how he could speak 
as if he did not know the church if he knew fifty of the certainly 
then not very large group of Christians at Rome. If these 
salutations should have been written to the church at Ephesus 
where Paul had spent a couple of years, they would be in every 
way at once to be accounted for. No single name would appear 
to be singular. 

If, however, this letter, that is to say, this sixteenth chapter 
in the main, had been written to Ephesus, and if that fact 
were to be reflected in the documents which contain the text, 
the doxology would not be moved from the end of the sixteenth 
chapter to the end of the fourteenth, but to the end of the 
fifteenth chapter. But no single document puts the doxology 
there. 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT — ROMANS 1 5 AND 1 6 525 

Here a word comes in that Origen speaks. He really said 
a great deal about this passage in a very few words. He not 
only says that Marcion omitted the doxology, but he also says 
that Marcion cut out the whole of the last two chapters. I said a 
while ago that heretics were sometimes accused of corrupting or 
curtailing the text, when it is apparent to us that they are merely 
using the manuscripts which the ordinary course of their life had 
placed in their hands. And those manuscripts may have been 
better than the manuscripts of the men who attacked them. 
Marcion, who came from the East, from Pontus, to Rome in the 
year 138 or 139, perhaps, only about eighty-five years after 
Romans was written, may have had in Rome, and copied, a roll 
of Romans which did actually stop at 14 23 . The doxology might 
have been there or not. If it were there, Marcion may have cut 
it off because he did not like the favourable allusion to the 
prophetic writings. 

It would be possible that Paul's original letter to the Romans 
had closed at 14 23 with the doxology, and without a long series 
of intimate greetings to people whom he did not know. The 
fifteenth chapter might then have been a letter written by 
Paul at a later date, and written to the Romans. The six- 
teenth chapter could well have been a letter of recommenda- 
tion written for Phcebe to the church at Ephesus. Phcebe might 
even have received the Epistle to the Romans from Paul at 
Cenchrea, and have taken a ship which was going to sail from 
Cenchrea to Ephesus and then westward to Rome. It may have 
been the ship of a Christian owner who gave her a free passage. 
Such a roundabout voyage would not have been strange at that 
day, and might occur even to-day. All ships do not touch at all 
ports. Pursuing the thought, Phcebe having delivered the letter 
at Ephesus, will then have begged it off or have copied it for 
herself as a recommendation for Rome, and all the good people 
so kindly named by Paul will have been glad to let their praises 
be carried by Phcebe to the capital city. Then at some later 
day, the short letter composing the fifteenth chapter and Phcebe's 
Ephesian letter were (see p. 320) by accident, or even on purpose 
as Pauline, copied at the end of a new roll on which Romans was 
written, and the doxology was moved from after 14 23 to after 16 24 . 

Should, however, anyone choose to reject as pure fancy the 
theory of the main part of the sixteenth chapter as sent first to 



526 THE TEXT 

Ephesus and then reaching Rome, I have only to say that I 
should have no objections to offer to another thought. If, 
namely, the greetings in the sixteenth chapter, naturally as many 
of them seem to appertain to Ephesus, should be conceived of as 
written in a brief note by Paul at some later day, after he had 
spent the first two years at Rome and had become, though a 
prisoner, well acquainted with the Christians there, — as written 
then to the Romans, they would offer no further difficulty. The 
addition of the two notes to the Epistle and the transfer of the 
doxology would remain the same. 



Oneness of Modern Text. 

Before taking up the consideration of these various passages, 
I referred (p. 508) to the negative comfort that may be drawn 
from the thought that we need not look for a future cutting out 
of larger portions of text. We may close our view of the criticism 
of the text by the positive comfort to be found in the oneness of 
modern textual criticism, and in the proportionally large amount 
of text that seems to be well settled. 

It has sometimes been thought that textual critics endangered 
and damaged the text, and it has been imagined that their 
collections of various readings from the manuscripts were so 
many signs of the disintegration of the text at their hands. But 
those who have such fears forget that the critics do not invent 
the various readings. They only take the trouble to compare 
texts, and to say what the testimony to the various forms of the 
text is. And it is further alleged that every text determined upon 
is different from the preceding text, and that there is no progress 
in textual criticism, but that all is growing worse. The aim of all 
these complaints is to say that we should throw all textual 
criticism and all textual critics overboard, and live along in 
blissful ignorance of right or wrong readings, or of goodness and 
badness in texts, not taking as much interest in the texts of our 
New Testament as the Shakespeare scholars take in the text of 
Shakespeare, the Dante scholars in that of Dante, or the classical 
philologians in that of Homer. 

So far from its being the case that the great textual critics 



EARLY HISTORY OF TEXT 527 

have made no progress in determining the text, we can see by 
a single example in what a high degree they have succeeded 
in fixing it. If we turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews we 
find in a single chapter, in the twelfth, besides a number of 
other places in which the so-called Received Text was wrong, 
five places in which the readings which it contained either have 
no known documentary support or such as is in no wise to be 
compared to the support given by the better witnesses to the 
readings of the great critics. That by the bye. 

As to the agreement of the three editions of Tregelles, West- 
cott and Hort, and Tischendorf, we may take into account the 
whole of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Tregelles did not have at 
his command all that the other editions had, and nevertheless he 
only stands alone in ten places, two of which are omissions, in 
that he once leaves out "the" and once leaves out "and," — 
three are additions, in that he adds the word "the" twice in 
one verse, and in another verse the word "work," and at the end 
of the Epistle " Amen," — and three are grammatical differences. 
Westcott and Hort are found alone seven times. They make 
two additions, once of "as a garment," and once of "and." 
They put the word "roll up" instead of the word "change," 
which in the Greek only alters three letters. They move a 
comma from after the word "assembly" to before that word. 
And they make three grammatical changes. And, finally, Tisch- 
endorf, of whom people often speak as if he treated the text in- 
considerately, arbitrarily, and rashly, is found to stand alone only 
four times. He has " injustice " instead of " lawlessness," a differ- 
ence of three letters in Greek ; he leaves out an article ; he has 
" to the " instead of " the " ; and he has a different tense of the 
same verb in a quotation from the Old Testament. 

From that we can see that the tendency of these scholars 
was not altogether so centrifugal and destructive as has at times 
been supposed. Those who decry textual criticism as dangerous 
and destructive, are usually not aware of the comparatively 
limited extent of the text of the New Testament, which is 
subject to doubt. And the work of the editors whom we have 
just mentioned has gone far towards circumscribing still more 
narrowly the field. They have in so many cases cleared up 
difficulties, solved doubts, and settled readings apparently for 
good, that much less is left as debatable ground. The second 



528 THE TEXT 

page of Hort's Introduction to the edition of Westcott and 
Hort should be learned by heart by everyone who fears that 
the New Testament will vanish into thin air under the chemical 
processes of textual criticism. Hort presents first of all as the 
result of a rough computation the proportion of words that 
are generally accepted as well established and beyond doubt, 
as not less than seven-eighths of the whole New Testament. 
Then, however, he takes up the remaining eighth, the due field 
of the textual critic, and reminds us that it is very largely made 
up of trifling differences ; for example, among other things, of the 
mere order of the words, and of differences of spelling. In 
consequence, he reckons that the words still subject to doubt do 
not make up more than about one-sixtieth of the New Testament. 
This might seem to be enough to calm the troubled minds of 
those who tremble before or are indignantly hostile to the criticism 
of the text. Yet that is not enough. 

The examination of the variations still left shows that a 
large majority of them are of comparatively slight importance. 
Hort's final judgment is that the field covered by substantial 
variations " can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the 
entire text." In order to gain an idea of what that means, we 
can be very plain. A Greek New Testament lying at my side 
contains five hundred and sixty pages not as large as my hand, 
and there are a couple of lines of various readings on most of 
the pages. A thousandth part of that would then after all be in 
the neighbourhood of a half a page or fifteen or sixteen of these 
small lines. Really that is not very much. And the great point 
for a Christian is that he must wish to have his one great book 
brought into the very best condition possible. It would be strange 
if a Christian should take pains to have a well-built church, and 
wish to have a well-prepared pastor, and be anxious that a good 
choir be at command, but should say : " It is no matter about 
the New Testament. The edition that Estienne printed three 
centuries and a half ago, when but little was known about the text, 
is quite good enough for me." It is singular to see a man anxious 
to have the latest and best thing in electric lights, but totally 
indifferent as to having the best text in his New Testament. 



529 



INDEX 



Abbot, Ezra, 339, 462. 

Abbott, Thomas Kingsmill, 357. 

Abbreviations in Sinaiticus, 334, 

335- 
Abraham's 318 servants, 78. 
Acacius of Csesarea, 433. 
Acts, 183, 184. 
Ada Codex in Trier, 416. 
Addai, teaching of, 128. 
Adulteress, story of, 379, 513-518. 
-^Eschines, 16. 

Affrey, Denis Auguste, 456. 
Aganon, 358. 
Agapius of Caesarea, 256. 
Akhmimic translation, 405 
Albert, king of Saxony, 161. 
Alcala, 439. 
Alcuin, 412. 

Alexander, a martyr, 144. 
Alexander of Alexandria, 433. 

Lycopolis, 432. 
Alexandrian manuscript, 340-343. 
Alexandrians, Epistle to, 132. 
Alexandrinus, Codex, 340-343. 
Alexius Aristenus, 239. 
Alford, Henry, 461. 
Alfred, King, 417. 
Allix, Pierre, 350. 
Alogians, 151. 
Alypos, 392. 
Amastrians, 134. 
Ambrosiaster, 434. 
Ambrosius, 434. 
Amiata manuscript, 413. 
Ammonic translation, 405. 
Ammonius, 429, 432. 
Amphilochius of Iconium, 275-277, 

433- 
Anastasius of Sinai, 101. 

34 



Ancient handwriting, 314. 
Andrew, the apostle, 131. 
Andrew of Csesarea, 291, 383, 

. 473- 
Anicetus, 115. 

Anthony, St., 403, 404, 433. 
Antinous, 114. 
Antitactse, 430. 
Antoninus Verus, 142. 
Antonio from Lebrija, 440. 
Antwerp polyglot, 442. 
Apelles, 180, 430. 
Aphraates, James, 429, 432. 
Apolinarius, 115, 434. 
Apollonius, 432. 
Apostle, a book of lessons, 390. 
Apostolic age, 43. 
Apostolical Constitutions, 432. 
Appolonados Theosteriktos, 305. 
Aprigius, 429. 
Archekeus, 431. 
Arethas of Csesarea, 291, 383. 
Aristides, 431. 

Aristion, the presbyter, 511, 512. 
Arius, 433. 

Armenian translation, 406, 407. 
Arsinous, 133. 
Asterius, 433. 
Athanasius of Alexandria, 19, 267- 

2 7i, 433. 434- 
Athenagoras of Athens, in, 137, 168, 

200, 209, 431. 
Attalos, a martyr, 143, 144. 
Atticus, 120, 121. 
Attius, 121. 
Avesta, 23. 

Augustine, 282, 284-286, 435. 
Autolycus, 138-142. 
Aymont, Jean, thief, 365, 414. 



53o 



INDEX 



B 



Bacchylides, 134. 
Bacon, Roger, 412. 
Bandini, Angelo Maria, 378. 
Barnabas, letter of, 77, 204, 209, 239, 

240, 430. 
Barrett, John, 357. 
Bashmuric translation, 405. 
Basil the Great of Csesarea in Cappa- 

docia, 274, 275, 434. 
Basilides, 69, 70, 116, 133, 171, 187, 

203, 207, 209, 430. 
Batiffol, Pierre, 362, 364. 
Bede, the venerable, 251, 363. 
Bellarmin, 412, 413. 
Bengel, Johannes Albrecht, 447. 
Bentley, Richard, 353, 446. 
Berengar, 414. 
Bessarion, Cardinal, 345. 
Beze, Theodore de, 350, 351, 442. 
Birch, Andreas, 451. 
Blandina, a martyr, 143. 
Boheiric translation, 404, 405, 430. 
Boniface of Rome, 278. 



Book of the Dead, 21. 
Book of Armagh, 416. 

Chad, 415. 

Deer, 414. 

Dimma, 417. 

Durrow, 417. 

Kells, 417. 

Moling, \ 

Mulling, J 417 ' 
Bookmaking, 32. 
Books outside of New Testament, 40 

41. 
" born again," 93, 94. 
Bowyer, William, 449, 450. 
Brahmans, 21. 
Brandscheid, 510. 
British and Foreign Bible Society, 

361, 464. 
Buddhists, 21. 
Burgon, John William, 339, 378, 411, 

462. 
Burkard, St., of Wtirzburg, 416. 
Buttmann, Philipp, 453. 



Qesar on journey, 29. 

Csesarea and manuscripts, 35. 

Csesarius, 434. 

Callistus, 432. 

Canon in Egypt, 21. 

Canon, history of, 7, 8. 

Canon, Jewish, 21. 

Canon, the word, 15. 

Carpocrates, 163, 430. 

Carpocratians, 1 16. 

Carthage, Synod of, in 397, 278. 

Cassiodorius, 221, 281. 

Cassius of Tyre, 158. 

Cataphrygians, 133. 

Catholic Epistles, 184-186. 

Catholic Epistles of Dionysius of 

Corinth, 134. 
Celsus, ill, 145, 146. 
Ceolfrid, abbot of Yarrow, 413. 
Cerinthus, 68, 163, 211, 229, 250. 
Chalkopratia, 386. 
Chapters, 469. 
Charlemagne, 412. 
Charlemagne's Bible, 415. 
Charles the Bald, 414. 
Charles I., 341. 



Cherubim and Gospels, 149. 
Christians and scribes, 34. 
Christina, Queen, 418. 
Chrysophora, 136. 

Chrysostom, 279, 280, 390, 428, 433. 
Church Writers, 419-436. 
Claromontanus, Codex, 282, 350. 
Clarus of Ptolemseis, 158. 
Classes of text, 480. 

their origin, 481, 502, 

503- 
in profane books, 481. 
Clement of Alexandria, 17, 21, 79, 

165, 169, 172, 187, 199, 219-222, 

238, 250, 430. 
Clement of Rome, 16, 42, 62-67, 116, 

135, 186, 192, 195, 203, 209, 210, 

236-239. 
Clement vm., Pope, 413. 
Cleobios, 116. 
Clermont, 351. 
Clopas, 120, 159. 
Cnossians, 134, 135. 
Codex Alexandrinus, 340-343. 
Amiatinus, 413. 
Argenteus, 418. 



INDEX 



531 



Codex Augiensis, 366, 367. 
Bezae, 350-353. 
Bomerianus, 366, 367. 
Claromontanus, 350. 
Colbertinus, 41 1. 

A, 357-359- 

Emmerami, 414. 

Ephrsemi, 348-35°- 

Fuldensis, 414. 

Montfortianus, 374, 509, 510. 

[Ravianus], 376. 

Sinaiticus, 329-340, 458, 459. 

Vaticanus, 343-348. 

Vercellensis, 410, 434. 

Witekind, 416. 
Colossians, 207, 208. 
Columban, 410. 
Commodus, 116. 

Complutensian polyglot, 439, 440. 
Constantine, apostle to the Slaves, 

418. 
Constantine's edicts, 18. 
Constantine's fifty manuscripts, 263, 

326-328. 
Conybeare, Frederick Cornwallis, 

5"- 

Coptic translation, 156, 157, 403-405. 



Copying books, 306, 307. 
Corbey Bible, 416. 
Corinthians, First, 49, 195-201. 

Second, 201. 

Third, 254. 
Cornelius, St., of Compiegne, 415. 
Cornelius of Rome, 17, 432. 
Coronation Book, 415. 
Corrections for Latin, 412. 
Correctoria, 412. 
Corrupting texts, 136. 
Council of Antioch in 341, 18. 

Nice in 325, 18. 
Covenant, New, 467. 
Cowper, B. H., 343. 
Cozza-Luzi, Giuseppe, 347. 
Crescens, 124. 
Criticisms, three, 1-3. 
Cronin, H. S., 355. 
Cureton, William, 356, 398. 
Cursive writing, 330. 
Cuthbert Gospels, 415. 
Cyprian, Thascius Csecilius, 232, 429, 

432, 435- 
Cyril, apostle to the Slaves, 418. 
Cyril of Jerusalem, 264, 433. 
Cyril Lucar, 341. 



D 



Damasus, Pope, 41 1. 

Delitzsch, Franz, 383, 464. 

Demetrius Ducas, 440. 

Demiurge, 81. 

Diatessaron, 124-128, 425, 426. 

Didymus of Alexandria, 277, 433. 

Diocletian, 18. 

Diodorus of Tarsus, 433. 

Diognetus, letter to, 73, 86, 87, 184, 

189, I93> 196, 201, 204, 205, 

431- 



Dionysius of Alexandria, 227-232, 432. 

Corinth, 115, 133-137. 

Rome, 233. 
Distances from Rome, 27. 
Docetoe, 431. 

Dominicans correcting text, 412. 
Domitian, 119. 
Domhnach Airgid, 416. 
Door of Jesus, 113. 
Dositheus, 1 16. 
Druthmar, 468. 



E 



Easter, 159, 388. 
Ebionites, 69. 
Echternach Gospels, 416. 
Editions, Printed, 437-466. 
Egyptians, Gospel to the, 252. 
Ehrhard, Albert, 378. 
Eight, the, 154. 
Elearchic translation, 405. 
Eleutherus of Rome, 115, 116, 148. 
Elpistos, 134. 



Elzevir editions, 443, 444. 
Encratitae, 431. 
Enoch, book of, 223. 
Ephesians, 203-205. 
Ephesus, 309. 
Ephraemi, Codex, 348-350. 
Ephraim the Syrian, 128, 397, 432. 
Epiphanius, 151, 277, and often be- 
sides, 434. 
Epiphanius Magister Paschalis, 392. 



532 



INDEX 



Epistles, 55, 56. 

Epistles, Catholic, 184-186. 

Erasmus, 288, 440. 

Erasmus and I John 5 7 - 8 , 374, 382. 

Estienne, Robert, 441, 474. 

Henri, 441, 474. 

Henri 11., 441. 
Ethel wald of Lindisfarne, 415. 
Ethiopic Church, 290. 
Ethiopic Translation, 405, 406, 433. 
Eunomius of Cyzicus, 434. 
Euphemius, 468. 
Euripides, 16. 



Eusebius of Oesarea, everywhere, 

especially 35, 257-264, 433. 
Eusebius, Age of, 256-272. 
Eusebius' harmony of Gospels, 470. 
Eusebius of Emesa, 280, 433. 
Eustathius of Antioch, 433. 
Eustathius, a scribe, 376. 
Euthalius, 472. 
Eutychius, St., 354. 
Evagrius, 433. 
Evans, Arthur John, 134. 
Exports from Palestine, 31. 
Externals of Text, 467. 



Fabian of Antioch, 17. 
Fabiani, Henrico, 347. 
Faustinus, 278, 434, 435, 436. 
Faustus the Manichsean, 435. 
Fayyumic translation, 405. 
Felix, 48. 
Fell, John, 445. 
Ferrar group, 371, 372. 
Ferrar, W. H., 372. 



Firmilian, 17, 232, 432. 
Flora, 80, 165. 
Florinus, 146-148. 
Fortunatianus, 434. 
Fox, Sir Stephen, 160. 
Franciscans correcting text, 412. 
Frauenstadt, 41. 
Froben, 440. 



Gaius, 432. 

Galatians, 201-203. 

Gallia Placidia, 436. 

Gardie, Magnus Gabriele de la, 418. 

Gardthausen, Viktor, 339. 

Gaudentius, 434. 

Gebhardt, Oskar von, 362, 457. 

Genealogy confused, 375. 

Gibson, Mrs. Margaret Dunlop, 

398. 
Gigas Holmensis, 412. 
"God to Man," 133, 136, 137, 213- 

216, 264. 
Godeschalk, 358. 
Gorthseus, 116. 
Gortynians, 134. 

Gospel, a book of lessons, 384-390. 
Gospels, 56. 

Gospels, Four, as four winds, 149. 
Gospels of Valentinians, 80. 



Gospels of Adalbald, 416. 

Echternach, 416. 

St. Medard, 416. 

the Oath, 415. 
Gothic translation, 407, 417, 418, 

436. 
Gottschalk, 367. 
Great Declaration, 67. 
Green, Thomas Sheldon, 462. 
Gregory of Nazianzus, 273, 274, 434. 

Nyssa, 275, 434. 
Gregory Thaumaturgus, 432. 
Grenfell and Hunt, 512. 
Griesbach, Johann Jakob, 448. 
Guizot, Francis Pierre Guillaume, 

456. 
Guy, Edward A., 379. 
Guzman, 440. 

Gwilliam, George Henry, 401. 
Gwynn, John, 402, 403. 



INDEX 



533 



H 



Hadrian, 114. 
Hall, Isaac H., 402. 
Handwriting, large, 314. 

running, 314. 
Hansell, E. H., 343. 
Harley, Count, 365. 
Harmony of Gospels, 470. 
Harnack, Adolf, 362. 
Harris, J. Rendel, 363. 
Harwood, Edward, 449, 450. 
Haseloff, Arthur, 362. 
Hearne, Thomas, 363. 
Hebrew vowel points inspired, 290. 
Hebrews, 65, 66, 210, 211, 223, 226. 
Hebrews, text of, 527. 
Hebrews, Gospel of, 117, 245-251. 
Hegesippus, 16, 1 12-123, 130, 174, 

183, 184, 430. 
Heracleon, 166, 172, 179, 180, 194, 

197, 209, 431. 
Hermas, 81-85, 133, 180, 184, 186, 

187, 198, 211, 212, 223, 240-245. 



Hermes Trismegistos, 21. 

Hermetical books, 21. 

Hermias, 431. 

Hermogenes, 138. 

Hermonymos, George, 373, 377, 

382. 
Herod, 142. 
Hierapolis, 97. 
Highgate school, 379. 
Hilarion, a monk, 392. 
Hilary of Poitiers, 432, 435. 
Hilgenfeld, Adolf, 339. 
Hincmar, 416. 

Hippolytus, 67 and often, 432. 
History, Early, of Text, 479. 
Homoioteleuton, 335. 
Horner, George, 405. 
Hort, Fenton John Anthony, 462, 

463, 483, 489, 493, 505, 506, 507, 

527, 528. 
Hug, Leonhard, 346. 
Hugo of St. Caro, 473, 474. 



Ignatius of Antioch, 71, 178, 208, 

430- 
Imports into Palestine, 31. 
Infancy, gospel of, 252. 
Intercommunication, 26. 
Interesting Passages, 508-526. 
Irenaeus, 125, 146-154, 161, 166, 



167, 189, 194, 205, 212, 
426, 431. 
Age of, 111-217. 
Irwin, Thomas, 414. 
Isaiah of Egypt, 433. 
Isidore of Sevilla, Hispalensis, 355. 
Ivocatus, 119. 



J 



Jacob of Nisibis, 432. 

James the brother of Jesus, 112-114. 

James, the Epistle of, 186, 187. 

Jerome, 251, 282-284, 4", 433- 

Jesus Christ is Archives, 72. 

Jesus, His relatives, 1 19. 

Joasaph, 379. 

John: two Johns? 230, 231 ; a 

presbyter John, 72. 
John's Gospel, .131, 174-183 ; written 

by Prochorus ? 312, 313. 
John, First, 189. 

John, Second and Third, 131, 190. 
John Chrysostom, 279, 280. 



John of Placenta, 438. 

John II. Porphyrogenitus, 377. 

John Serbopulos, 373, 374. 

Jude, 119, 122, 191. 

Julius Africanus, 429, 431. 

Julius Hilarianus, 279. 

Julius of Rome, 434. 

Junilius, 281. 

Justin the Gnostic, 211. 

Justin Martyr, 87-97, 124, 167, 170, 
173, 174, 178, 181, 182, 198, 199, 
202, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212, 215, 
248, 249, 430. 

Juvencus, 435. 



534 



INDEX 



Kaisarie, 354. 

Karapet, archimandrite, 428. 
Kelley, William, 462. 
Kenyon, Frederic G., 361. 
Kinds of Text, 480. 



K 



Koenigs, Fraulein Elise, 465. 
Koran, 22. 
Kiinstle, Karl, 509. 
Kiister, Ludolf, 446. 



Lacedaemonians, 134. 

Lachmann, Carl, 349, 452-455, 456. 

Lactantius, 436. 

Langfranc of Canterbury, 412. 

Langton, Stephen, 473. 

Laodicea, Synod of, 265-267. 

Laodiceans, Epistle to, 132, 254. 

Latin, Old, 156, 157. 

Latin Translation, 407-417. 

Laud, Archbishop, 363. 

Law, Prophets, Writings, 25. 

Leaf- Books, 322. 

Leontius of Csesarea, 263. 

Lesoeuf, 375. 

Lesson Books, 384-393. 

Lewis, Mrs. Agnes Smith, 398. 



Libri, book thief, 414. 

Life more than word, 44. 

Lindisfarne Gospels, 415. 

Linus of Rome, 257. 

Liuthard, 414. 

London polyglot, 443. 

Lord's Day, 303. 

Lord's Prayer, 75. 

Lucian the martyr, 499. 

Lucian, an overseer, 355. 

Lucifer of Cagliari, 278, 434. 

Luke, 52, 171-174. 

Luke's " many Gospels," 54. 

Luke and Theophilus, 311. 

Luther, 288, 289. 

Lyons, 142-145, 148, 184, 431. 



M 



Macarius I. of Jerusalem, 433. 

Macarius Magnes, 254, 433. 

McClellan, John Brown, 462. 

Macedonius, 434. 

Mace, Daniel (William?), 446. 

Mac Regol, Gospels of, 415. 

Mai, Cardinal Angelo, 346. 

Makarius, a monk, 367. 

Malchion, 233. 

Malotros, Nicholas, 391. 

" Man to Men," 133, 136, 137, 213- 

216, 264, 278. 
Manetho, 21. 
Manucci, Aldo, 439. 
Manuscripts, Large Letter Greek, 
329-369. 
Small Letter Greek, 

370-383. 
Marcellus of Ancyra, 434. 
Marcion, 81, 82, 116, 125, 129, 131- 

133, 15°. *5*j l8o > 431. 
Marcosians, 166, 212, 431. 
Marcus Aurelius, 142. 
Marcus, Diadochus, 433. 



Marcus, a monk, 433. 

Mark, 130, 170. 

Mark, Gospel of, 52, 3 1 1. 

Mark the Valentinian, 166. 

Masbotheus, 116. 

Maternus, 436. 

Mathias, Gospel of, 252. 

Matthai, Christian Friedrich, 367, 

45Q> 45 1- 
Matthew's Aramaic book, 52. 
Matthew, Gospel according to, 130, 

161-169. 
Maximinus, 436. 
Maximus of Alexandria, 233. 
Meletius of Antioch, 433. 
Melito of Sardes, 105-107, 115, 431. 
" Memoirs" of Justin Martyr, 90-94. 
Menander, 68, 69, 116. 
Merinthus, 250. 
Methodius, 418, 431. 
Michael Palseologus, Emperor, 373. 
Middle Egyptian translation, 405. 
Mill, John, 445, 446. 
Miltiades, 133. 



INDEX 



535 



Minuscle, 370. 

Modern text, oneness of, 526-528. 

Modestus, 115. 

Mommsen, Theodor, 271. 

Montanus, Benedict Arius, 442. 

Montfaucon, Bernard de, 364. 



Moses Marden, 401. 

Mountain, the Holy, 360. 

Muiioz, Antonio, 362. 

Muratorian Fragment, 129-133, 184, 

200. 
Musanus, 115. 



N 



Naassenes, 69, 431. 

Narcissus, 158. 

Nazarenes, 250. 

Nestle, Eberhard, 464. 

Newton, B. W., 460. 

New Year in Lesson Books, 386. 

Nice, Council of, 262. 



Nicephorus, 239, "240, 251. 
Nicholas, Cardinal, 412. 
Nicodemus, Gospel of, 252. 
Nicomedians, 134. 
Novatian, 432. 
Novatus, 17. 
Nowack, Rosina, 160. 



O 



Oasitic translation, 405. 

Official Text, 500, 501. 

Old Latin, 156, 157, 407, 431. 

Old Syriac, 156, 157. 

Omont, Henri, 368. 

Oneness of modern text, 526-528. 

Onesimus, 105. 

Ophites, 69, 163, 171, 175-177. 192, 

1 93» J 95> 201-203, 211. 
Optatus of Milevis, 279, 435. 



Order of books, 467. 

Origen, 17, 224-227, 243, 427, 431. 

Age of, 218-255. 
Origin of Classes of Text, 481, 502, 

503. 
Original Text, 483-485. 
Originals of New Testament books, 

3J5-. 
Orsiesis, 433. 



Pacianus, 279, 435. 

Palladius of Helenopolis, 280. 

Palmas in Pontus, 134. 

Pamphilus, 256, 433. 

Pantsenus, 219. 

Paper, papyrus, 301, 302. 

Papias, 97-102, 168, 182, 189, 431. 

Papyrus, 299. 

Parchment, 317. 

Parchment in the East, 333, 334. 

Paris polyglot, 443. 

Parmenianus, 435. 

Passages of Interest, 508-526. 

Passion Gospels, 391. 

Paul's Epistles, 132, 191, 192. 

Paul of Samosata, 233, 431. 

Paulinus, Pontius, Meropius, 434. 

Payment for copying books, 318, 319. 

Pens, reed, 300. 

Penkalla, Frau, 160. 

Peratae, 177, 196, 207, 431. 



Pergamon, 309. 
Periods, 14, 15. 
Perpetua, Acts of, 431. 
Peshitta, 400, 401. 
Peter and Mark, 72, 73. 
Peter, First, 187-189. 
Peter, Gospel, Teaching, Acts, Reve- 
lation of, 252-254. 
Peter of Alexandria, 432. 
Petrocius, St., 415. 
Philastrius, 435. 
Phileas, 433. 
Philemon, 210. 
Philip of Crete, 115, 134. 
Philippians, 205, 206. 
Philo, 16, 67. 
Philoxenus, 402. 
Phcebadius, "\ ,. 
Phoegadius,/^ 
Phoenix, 46. 
Photius, 221. 



536 



INDEX 



Phrygia, 143, 144. 

Pierius, 256. 

Pillar in Forum, 28. 

Pinytus of Cnossos, III, 115, 134, 

Pistis Sophia, 432. 
Plantin, Christoph, 443. 
Polished Text, 491-494. 
Polycarp, 73~75> 145-148, 184, 188, 
196, 201, 205, 206, 208, 209, 245, 

431- 
Polycarp the reviser of Syrian text, 

402. 
Polycleitos, 15. 
Polycrates, 17, 431. 
Polyglot, Antwerp, 442. 

Complutensian, 439, 440. 



Polyglot, London, 443. 

Paris, 443. 
Porfiri Uspenski, 381. 
Porphyrius, 431. 
Post-Apostolic Age, 55-110. 
Potheinos, a martyr, 144, 145. 
Presbyters in Irenaeus, 102-105. 
Primus of Corinth, 115, 134. 
Printed Editions, 437-466. 
Priscilla and Aquila, 30. 
Priscillian, 435, 509. 
Prochorus, 312, 313, 381. 
Pseudo-Clement, 85. 
Ptolemseus, 80, 165, 430. 
Punctuation, 475. 
Puplius of Athens, 134. 



Quadratus of Athens, 134. 
Quaritch, 379. 



Quotations sought, t,"], 60-62. 



R 



Rastislav, 418. 

Reading in church, 39, 50, 56-59, 
136, 212-216, 235, 236, 292, 303, 

304, 3 8 4-393- 
Rebaptizing, 435. 
Received Text, 443, 444, 501. 
Rechab, 114. 
Reformation, canon at time of, 288- 

290. 
Rettig, H. C. M., 359. 
Reuss, Eduard, 450. 
Revelation, 211, 212, 229. 



Revision, First Syrian, 494, 496. 

Second Syrian, 500. 
Re- Wrought Text, 486-491, 502, 503. 
Rigveda, 21. 
Roads, 29. 

Robinson, J. Armitage, 368. 
Roder, Johann Leonhard, 1 60. 
Roger Bacon, 412. 
Romans, 192-195. 

15th and 16th chapters, 319, 
320. 
Rome's bounty to other Churches, 136. 



Sabbath is Saturday, 303, 387, 

388. 
Sabellius, 252. 

Sa'idic translation, 404, 405, 430. 
Sanday, William, 413. 
Santes Pagnini, 474. 
Sarumsachly, 354. 
Satornilians, 116. 
Satorninus, 125. 
Saybrook, 161. 

Schmidt, Andreas Nicolaievitch, 160. 
Schmiedel, Paul Wilhelm, 464. 



Scholz, Johannes Martin Augustinus, 

378, 451 > 452. 
Schopenhauer, 41. 
Schulz, David, 456. 
Schurig, orderly sergeant, 161. 
Scribes, 23. 
Scrivener, Frederick Henry Ambrose, 

352, 461, 462. 
Seleucus, 21. 

Semler, Johann Salomo, 448. 
Serapion, 433. 
Serbopulos, John, 373, 374. 



INDEX 



537 



Sergio, Cajetano, 347. 

Sethians, 164, 177, 205. 

Seven churches of Asia near together, 

309. 
Seven disputed books, 219, 235, 

256. 
Severus of Antioch, 356. 
Severus, a heretic, 125, 126. 
Shepherd of Hermas, 82. 
Shipping, 28. 
Sibylline books, 21. 
Sides of parchment, 323. 
Simeon, son of Clopas, 120, 159. 
Simon Magus, 67, 68, 116, 163, 175, 

.195. 
Simonin, 350. 
Sinai, monks of, 332, 333. 
Sinaiticus, Codex, 329-340, 458, 459. 

age of, 338. 

payment for, 332. 

text of, 337. 
Siricius, 435. 
Sixtus, Pope, 412, 413. 
Slavic translation, 407, 418. 
Smyrna, 309. 
Snake worshippers, 69. 



Society, British and Foreign Bible, 

361, 464. 
Soden, Hermann von, 465. 
Soter of Rome, 134, 136, 236, 237. 
Sparwenfeldt, Johannes Gabriele, 

417. 
Speculum, 410. 
Spelling, 476. 

Stephen II. Harding of Citeaux, 412. 
Stilicho, 22. 
Stosch, 365. 
Streane, A. W., 460. 
S tunica, 440. 

Subsa'idic translation, 405. 
Swiss Declaration of Faith, 1 675, 290. 
Synod of Ancyra of 315, 18. 

Antioch of 266, 17. 

Antioch of 269, 233. 

Laodicea of 363, 19, 265- 
267. 
Syria, 155. 

Syriac, Old, 156, 157. 
Syrian Church, 291. 
Syrian Revision, First, 494, 496. 

Second, 500. 
Syrian translations, 376-403. 



Tacitus, 46. 
Talmud, 22. 
Tank'a Wald, 406. 
Tarichese, the Pickelries, 31. 
Tatian, 123-129, 169, 183, 199, 399, 

400, 425, 426, 430. 
Teaching of Apostles, 75, 430. 
Tertius, 300, 302. 
Tertullian, 222-224, 242, 243, 431, 

43 2 - . 
Tesfa Zion, 406. 
Testament, New, 467. 
Text, Official, 500, 501. 

Original, 483-485- 

Polished, 491-494. 

Re- Wrought, 486-491. 
Textus Receptus, 443, 444, 501. 
Thalassius in Libya, 433. 
Thebouthis, 1 16. 
Thecla, St., 341. 
Theodore Hagiopetritis, 375. 
Theodore of Heraclea, 434. 
Theodore of Mopsuestia, 281. 

Age of, 273-295. 



Theodoret of Cyrus, 127, 281. 
Theodosius of Philadelphia, 265. 
Theodosius, a scribe, 373, 374. 
Theodotus, 188, 194, 197, 198, 204- 

206, 431. 
Theodulf of Orleans, 412, 416. 
Theodulos, a monk, 354. 
Theognostus, 432. 
Theoktistus, a monk, 381. 
Theonas, 355, 379. 
Theophilus of Alexandria, 433. 
Theophilus of Antioch, in, 13S-142, 

169, 174, 183, 189, 195, 200, 205, 

206, 208, 210, 211, 430. 
Theophilus of Csesarea, 157, 158. 
Theophylact of Bulgaria, 380. 
Thessalonians, 208. 
Thomas, Gospel of, 252, 264. 
Thomas of Heraclea, 402. 
Thompson, Sir Edward Maunde, 

361, 
Thoth, 21. 
Thyatira, 309. 
Tichonius, 435. 



538 



INDEX 



Timothy, First and Second, 209. 
Timothy of Alexandria, 433. 
Tischendorf, 329-340, 345, 346, 349, 

35°> 455-459- 
Titus, 209, 210. 
Titus of Bostra, 432. 
Tradition, possibilities of, 159— 

162. 
Trajan, 120. 
Translations, 394-418. 

Arabic, 407. 

Armenian, 406, 407. 

Coptic, 403-405. 

Ethiopic, 405, 406. 

Georgian, 407. 



Translation, Gothic, 407. 

Latin, 407-417. 

Persian, 407. 

Slavic, 407. 

Syrian, 396-403. 
Travellers of old, 30. 
Tregelles, Samuel Prideaux, 346, 

460, 461. 
Trent, Council of, 289, 412, 440. 
Tribal archives in Israel, 23. 
True Word, the, of Celsus, 145, 

146. 
Trypho the Jew, 87. 
Twelve- Apostle cities, 321. 
Tychonius, 435. 



Ulfila, 355. 



U 



Ussher, James, 443. 



Valentinian Gospels, 80. 
Valentinus, 79, 116, 125, 133, 152, 

153, 165, 166, 179, 193, 196, 197, 

204, 430, 431. 
Valuation of books, 38. 
Vaticanus, Codex, 343-348. 
Vercellone, Carlo, 347. 
Vergece, Angelo, 377. 
Verses, 474. 



Vespasian, 114. 
Victor of Capua, 414. 

Rome, 147, 431. 
Victorinus, 432, 435. 
Vienne and Lyons, 142-145, 

184,431. 
Voss, Isaac, 418. 
Vowel points inspired, 290. 
Vulgarius, 380. 



148, 



W 



Walker, John, 446. 

Walton, Brian, 443. 

Waterloo officers, 160. 

Weger, Friedrich, 159, 160. 

Weiss, Bernhard, 463, 464. 

Wellemeyer, Hermann, 160. 

Wells, Edward, 446. 

Werden in Westphalia, 418. 

Westcott, Brooke Foss, the author of 
the best book ever written on the 
canon, 462, 463, 483, 489, 493, 
505, 506, 507, 527, 528. 

[Western] text, 489. 

Westminster Assembly 1645, 260. 

Wettstein, Johann Jakob, 447, 448. 



White, Henry Julian, 413. 
Wickham, Joseph Dresser, 16 1. 
Widmanstadt, Johann Albert, 401. 
Wittingham, William, 475. 
Woide, Karl Gottlieb, 343. 
Wolf, Johann Christoph, 353. 
Word, the True, of Celsus, 145, 146. 
Word less than life, 44. 
Wordsworth, John, 413. 
Writers, Church, 419-436. 
Writing, large, 314, 370, 371. 

small, 370, 371. 

running, 314. 
Wulfila, 355. 



index 539 

X 

Xenaia, 402. | Ximenes, Cardinal, 439. 



Yale College, 161. 



Z 



Za-selase, 406. J Zeno of Verona, 279, 435, 

Zarathustra, 22. 



The International Theological Library 



A History of the Reformation 

I. THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY 
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By THOMAS M. LINDSAY, M.A., D.D. 

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The International 

Critical Commentary 

un the Holy Scriptures of the Old and 
New Testaments 



EDITORS' PREFACE 



THERE are now before the public many Commentaries, 
written by British and American divines, of a popular 
or homiletical character. The Cambridge Bible for 
Schools, the Handbooks for Bible Classes and Private Students, 
The Speaker' s Commentary, The Popular Commentary (Schaff), 
The Expositor' s Bible, and other similar series, have their 
special place and importance. But they do not enter into the 
field of Critical Biblical scholarship occupied by such series of 
Commentaries as the Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum 
A. T. ; De Wette's Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum 
JV. T. ; Meyer's Kritisch-exegetischer Kom?nentar ; Keil and 
Delitzsch's Biblischer Commentar uber das A. T; Lange's 
Theologisch-homiletisches Bibelwerk ; Nowack's Handkommentar 
zum A. T. ; Holtzmann's Handkommentar zum N. T Several 
of these have been translated, edited, and in some cases enlarged 
and adapted, for the English-speaking public ; others are in 
process of translation. But no corresponding series by British 
or American divines has hitherto been produced. The way has 
been prepared by special Commentaries by Cheyne, Ellicott, 
Kalisch, Lightfoot, Perowne, Westcott, and others ; and the 
time has come, in the judgment of the projectors of this enter- 
prise, when it is practicable to combine British and American 
scholars in the production of a critical, comprehensive 
Commentary that will be abreast of modern biblical scholarship, 
and in a measure lead its van. 



The International Critical Commentary 

Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons of New York, and Messrs. 
T. & T. Clark of Edinburgh, propose to publish such a series 
of Commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, under the 
editorship of Prof. C. A. Briggs, D.D., in America, and of 
Prof. S. R. Driver, D.D., for the Old Testament, and the 
Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., for the New Testament, in 
Great Britain. 

The Commentaries will be international and inter-confessional, 
and will be free from polemical and ecclesiastical bias. They 
will be based upon a thorough critical study of the original texts 
of the Bible, and upon critical methods of interpretation. They 
are designed chiefly for students and clergymen, and will be 
written in a compact style. Each book will be preceded by an 
Introduction, stating the results of criticism upon it, and discuss- 
ing impartially the questions still remaining open. The details 
of criticism will appear in their proper place in the body of the 
Commentary. Each section of the Text will be introduced 
with a paraphrase, or summary of contents. Technical details 
of textual and philological criticism will, as a rule, be kept 
distinct from matter of a more general character ; and in the 
Old Testament the exegetical notes will be arranged, as far as 
possible, so as to be serviceable to students not acquainted with 
Hebrew. The History of Interpretation of the Books will be 
dealt with, when necessary, in the Introductions, with critical 
notices of the most important literature of the subject. Historical 
and Archaeological questions, as well as questions of Biblical 
Theology, are included in the plan of the Commentaries, but 
not Practical or Homiletical Exegesis. The Volumes will con- 
stitute a uniform series. 



The International Critical Commentary 



ARRANGEMENT OF VOLUMES AND AUTHORS 

THE OLD TESTAMENT 

GENESIS. The Rev. John Skinner, D.D., Professor of Old Testament 
Language and Literature, College of Presbyterian Church of England, 
Cambridge, England. 

EXODUS. The Rev. A. R. S. Kennedy, D.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
University of Edinburgh. 

LEVITICUS. J. F. Stenning, M.A., Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. 

NUMBERS. The Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
Mansfield College, Oxford . [Now Ready. 

DEUTERONOMY. The Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Pro- 
fessor of Hebrew, Oxford. [Now Ready. 

JOSHUA. The Rev. George Adam Smith, D.D., LL.D., Professor of 
Hebrew, United Free Church College, Glasgow. 

JUDGES. The Rev. George Moore, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Theol- 
ogy, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. [Now Ready. 

SAMUEL. The Rev. H. P. Smith, D.D., Professor of Old Testament 
Literature and History of Religion, Meadville, Pa. [Now Ready. 

KINGS. The Rev. Francis Brown, D.D., D.Litt., LL.D., Professor 
of Hebrew and Cognate Languages, Union Theological Seminary, New 
York City. 

CHRONICLES. The Rev. Edward L. Curtis, D.D., Professor of 
Hebrew, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. 

EZRA AND NEHEMIAH. The Rev. L.W. Batten, Ph.D., D.D., Rector 
of St. Mark's Church, New York City, sometime Professor of Hebrew, 
P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia. 

PSALMS. The Rev. Chas. A. Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., Graduate Pro- 
fessor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Symbolics, Union Theological 
Seminary, New York. [2 vols. Now Ready 

PROVERBS. The Rev. C. H. Toy, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. [Now Ready. 

JOB. The Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., Regius Professor of He- 
brew, Oxford. 



The International Critical Commentary 



ISAIAH. Chaps. I-XXXIX. The Rev. G. Buchanan Gray, D.D., 
Professor of Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford. 

ISAIAH. Chaps. XL-LXVI. The Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., D.Litt., 
Regius Professor of Hebrew, Oxford. 

JEREMIAH. The Rev. A. F. Kirkpatrick, D.D., Dean of Ely, sometime 
Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cambridge, England. 

EZEKIEL. The Rev. G. A. Cooke, M.A., sometime Fellow Magdalen 
College, and the Rev. Charles F. Burney, D.Litt., Fellow and Lecturer 
in Hebrew, St. John's College, Oxford. 

DANIEL. The Rev. John P. Peters, Ph.D., D.D., sometime Professor 
of Hebrew, P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia, now Rector of St. 
Michael's Church, New York City. 

AMOS AND HOSEA. W. R. Harper, Ph.D., LL.D., sometime Presi- 
dent of the University of Chicago, Illinois. \Norv Ready. 

MICAH TO HAGGAI. Prof. John P. Smith, University of Chicago; 
Prof. Charles P. Fagnani, D.D., Union Theological Seminary, New 
York; W. Hayes Ward, D.D., LL.D., Editor of The Independent, New 
York; Prof. Julius A. Bewer. Union Theological Seminary, New York, 
and Prof. H. G. Mitchell, D.D., Boston University. 

ZECHARIAH TO JONAH. Prof. H. G. Mitchell, D.D., Prof. John 
P. Smith and Prof. J. A. Bewer. 

ESTHER. The Rev. L. B. Paton, Ph.D., Professor of Hebrew, Hart- 
ford Theological Seminary. 

ECCLESIASTES. Prof. George A. Barton, Ph.D., Professor of Bibli- 
cal Literature, Bryn Mawr College, Pa. 

RUTH, SONG OF SONGS AND LAMENTATIONS. Rev. Charles A. 
Briggs, D.D., D.Litt., Professor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Sym- 
bolics, Union Theological Seminary, New York. 



THE NEW TESTAMENT 

ST. MATTHEW. The Rev. Willoughby C. Allen, M.A., Fellow and 
Lecturer in Theology and Hebrew, Exeter College, Oxford. \Now Ready. 

ST. MARK. Rev. E. P. Gould, D.D., sometime Professor of New Testa- 
ment Literature, P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia. [A r ow Ready. 

ST. LUKE. The Rev. Alfred Plummer, D.D., sometime Master of 
University College, Durham. [Now Ready. 



The International Critical Commentary 



ST. JOHN. The Very Rev. John Henry Bernard, D.D., Dean of St. 
Patrick's and Lecturer in Divinity, University of Dublin. 

HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. The Rev. William Sanday, D.D., 
LL.D., Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, Oxford, ana the Rev. Wil- 
LOUGHBY C. Allen, M.A., Fellow and Lecturer in Divinity and Hebrew, 
Exeter College, Oxford. 

ACTS. The Rev. C. H. Turner, D.D., Fellow of Magdalen College, 
Oxford, and the Rev. H. N. Bate, M.A., Examining Chaplain to the 
Bishop of London. 

ROMANS. The Rev. William Sanday, D.D., LL.D., Lady Margaret 
Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and the Rev. 
A. C. Headlam, M.A., D.D., Principal of King's College, London. 

[_A r 07v Ready. 

CORINTHIANS. The Right Rev. Arch. Robertson, D.D., LL.D., Lord 
Bishop of Exeter, and Dawson Walker, D.D., Theological Tutor in the 
University of Durham. 

GALATIANS. The Rev. Ernest D. Burton, D.D., Professor of New 
Testament Literature, University of Chicago. 

EPHESIANS AND COLOSSIANS. The Rev. T. K. Abbott, B.D., 
D.Litt., sometime Professor of Biblical Greek, Trinity College, Dublin, now 
Librarian of the same. \Now Ready. 

PHILIPPIANS AND PHILEMON. The Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, 
D. D., Professor of Biblical Literature, Union Theological Seminary, New 
York City. \Now Ready. 

THESSALONIANS. The Rev. James E. Frame, M.A., Professor of 
Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York. 

THE PASTORAL EPISTLES. The Rev. Walter Lock, D.D., Warden 

of Keble College and Professor of Exegesis, Oxford. 

HEBREWS. The Rev. A. Nairne, M.A., Professor of Hebrew in King's 
College, London. 

ST. JAMES. The Rev. J AMES II. Ropes, D.D., Bussey Professor of New 
Testament Criticism in Harvard University. 

PETER AND JUDE. The Rev. Charles Bigg, D.D., Regius Professor 
of Ecclesiastical History and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. [Now Ready. 

THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. The Rev. E. A. Brooke, B.D., Fellow 

and Divinity Lecturer in King's College, Cambridge. 

REVELATION. The Rev. Robert H. Charles, M.A., D.D., Professor 
of Biblical Greek in the University of Dublin. 



The International Critical Commentary 



VOLUMES NOW READY. 



Deuteronomy 



By the Rev, S. R. DRIVER, D.D., D.Litt. 

Regius Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 



"It is a pleasure to see at last a really critical Old Testament commentary 
in English upon a portion of the Pentateuch, and especially one of such 
merit. This I find superior to any other Commentary in any language upon 
Deuteronomy." — Professor E. L. Curtis, 0} Yale University. 

"This volume of Professor Driver's is marked by his well-known care and 
accuracy, and it will be a great boon to every one who wishes to acquire a 
thorough knowledge, either of the Hebrew language, or of the contents of 
the Book of Deuteronomy, and their significance for the development of Old 
Testament thought. The author finds scope for displaying his well-known 
wide and accurate knowledge, and delicate appreciation of the genius of the 
Hebrew language, and his readers are supplied with many carefully con- 
structed lists of words and expressions. He is at his best in the detailed 
examination of the text." — London Athenceum. 



Numbers 

By the Rev. Q. BUCHANAN GRAY, D.D. 

Professor of Hebrew, Mansfield College, Oxford 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 



"Most Bible readers have the impression that 'Numbers' is a dull book 
only relieved by the brilliancy of the Balaam chapters and some snatches 
of old Hebrew songs, but, as Prof. Gray shows with admirable skill and 
insight, its historical and religious value is not that which lies on the surface. 
Prof. Gray's Commentary is distinguished by fine scholarship and sanity 
of judgment; it is impossible to commend it too warmly." — Saturday Review 
{London). 



The International Critical Commentary 

Judges 

By Dr. GEORGE FOOT MOORE, D.D. 

Professor of Theology, Harvard University 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 



" Professor Moore has more than sustained his scholarly reputation in this 
work, which gives us for the first time in English a commentary on Judges 
not excelled, if indeed equalled, in any language of the world." — Professor 
L. W. Batten, of P. E. Divinity School, Philadelphia. 

"Although a critical commentary, this work has its practical uses, and by 
its divisions, headlines, etc., it is admirably adapted to the wants of all 
thoughtful students of the Scriptures. Indeed, with the other books of the 
series, it is sure to find its way into the hands of pastors and scholarly lay- 
men." — Portland Zion's Herald. 

"Like its predecessors, this volume will be warmly welcomed — whilst to 
those whose means of securing up-to-date information on the subject of which 
it treats are limited, it is simply invaluable." — Edinburgh Scotsman. 



The Books of Samuel 

By Rev. HENRY PRESERVED SMITH, D.D. 

Professor of Old Testament Literature and History of Religion, 

Meadville, Pa. 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 



" Professor Smith's Commentary will for some time be the standard work 
on Samuel, and we heartily congratulate him on scholarly work so faith- 
fully accomplished." — The Athenaum. 

"The literary quality of the book deserves mention. We do not usually 
go to commentaries for models of English style. But this book has a dis- 
tinct, though unobtrusive, literary flavor. It is delightful reading. The 
translation is always felicitous, and often renders further comment need- 
less." — The Evangelist. 

"The author exhibits precisely that scholarly attitude which will com- 
mend his work to the widest audience." — The Churchman. 

"The commentary is the most complete and minute hitherto published 
by an English-speaking scholar." — Literature. 



The International Critical Commentary 

The Book of Psalms 

By CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt. 

Graduate Professor of Theological Encyclopaedia and Symbolics, Union 

Theological Seminary, New York 

and 

EMILIE GRACE BRIGGS, B.D. 

a volumes. Crown 8vo. Price, $3.00 net each 
Postage additional 

" Christian scholarship seems here to have reached the hightest level yet 
attained in study of the book which in religious importance stands next to 
the Gospels. His work upon it is not likely to be excelled in learning, both 
massive and minute, by any volume of the International Series, to which it 
belongs." — The Outlook. 

"We have in this work what we should expect, extreme thoroughness, 
scholarly precision and depth of insight." — The Churchman. 

" It is scarcely too much to say that we have here in compact form the 
best available commentary upon the first book of the Psalter. It is not 
simply grammatical and lexical, but it embodies the best results of the 
author's study of Biblical theology. These serve to bring out doubly the 
significance and import of these hymns of worship of ancient Israel." — The 
Westminster. 



Proverbs 



By the Rev. CRAWFORD H. TOY, D.D., LL.D. 

Professor of Hebrew in Harvard Universitv 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 



"Professor Toy's commentary on Proverbs maintains the highest standard 
of the International Critical Commentaries. We can give no higher praise. 
Proverbs presents comparatively few problems in criticism, but offers large 
opportunities to the expositor and exegete. Professor Toy's work is 
thorough and complete." — The Congregationalist. 

"A first-class, up-to-date, critical and exegetical commentary on the Book 
of Proverbs in the English language was one of the crying needs of Biblical 
scholarship. Accordingly, we may not be yielding to the latest addition to 
the International Critical Series the tribute it deserves, when we say that it 
at once takes the first place in its class. That place it undoubtedly deserves, 
however, and would have secured even against much more formidable com- 
petitors than it happens to have. It is altogether a well-arranged, lucid 
exposition of this unique book in the Bible, based on a careful stud} - of the 
text and the linguistic and historical background of every part of it." — The 
Interior. 



The International Critical Commentary 



Amos and Hosea 

By WILLIAM RAINEY HARPER, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Late Professor of Semitic Languages and Literatures and President of the 

University of Chicago 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 



"I shall have pleasure in recommending it to all students in our Seminary. 
This book fills, in the most favorable manner, a long-felt want for a good 
critical commentary on two of the most interesting books in the Old Testa- 
ment."— Rev. Lewis B. Paton, Ph.D., Professor of Hebrew, Hartford 
Theological Seminary. 

"He has gone, with characteristic minuteness, not only into the analysis 
and discussion of each point, endeavoring in every case to be thoroughly 
exhaustive, but also into the history of exegesis and discussion. Nothing at 
all worthy of consideration has been passed by. The consequence is that 
when one carefully studies what has been brought together in this volume, 
either upon some passage of the two prophets treated, or upon some question 
of critical or antiquarian importance in the introductory portion of the 
volume, one feels that he has obtained an adequately exhaustive view of the 
subject." — The Interior. 



St. Matthew 

By the Rev. WILLOUGHBY C. ALLEN, M.A. 

Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 



"As a microscopic and practically exhaustive study and itemized state- 
ment of the probable or possible sources of the Synoptic Gospels and of 
their relations, one to another, this work has not been surpassed. I doubt 
if it has been equaled. And the author is not by any means lacking in 
spiritual insight." — The Methodist Review (Nashville). 

"This important work exhibits the well-known critical qualities of the 
International series, and should claim a leading place among commentaries 
on the First Gospel. The gospel is shown to owe its name to the discourse 
source, which together with Mark, entered into its composition probably 
between 65 and 75 A.D." — Biblical World. 

"A work of scholarship and patience that does honor to the Christian 
church." — Westminler. 



The International Critical Commentary 



St. Mark 



By the Rev. E. P. GOULD, D.D. 

Late Professor of New Testament Exegesis, P. E. Divinity School. 

Philadelphia 



Crown 8vo. Net, $2.50 



"The whole make-up is that of a thoroughly helpful, instructive critical 
study of the Word, surpassing anything of the kind ever attempted in the 
English language, and to students and clergymen knowing the proper use of 
a commentary it will prove an invaluable aid." — The Lutheran Quarterly. 

"Professor Gould has done his work well and thoroughly. . . . The 
commentary is an admirable example of the critical method at its best. . . . 
The Word study . . . shows not only familiarity with all the literature of 
the subject, but patient, faithful, and independent investigation. ... It 
will rank among the best, as it is the latest commentary on this basal Gospel." 
— The Christian Intelligencer. 

"Dr. Gould's commentary on Mark is a large success, . . . and a credit 
to American scholarship. . . . He has undoubtedly given us a commentary 
on Mark which surpasses all others, a thing we have reason to expect will 
be true in the case of every volume of the series to which it belongs." — The 
Biblical World. 



St. Luke 



By the Rev. ALFRED PLUMMER, D.D. 

Sometime Master of University College, Durham; formerly Fellow 
and Senior Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 



"It is distinguished throughout by learning, sobriety of judgment, and 
sound exegesis. It is a weighty contribution to the interpretation of the 
Third Gospel, and will take an honorable place in the series of which it 
forms a part." — Prof. D. D. Salmond, in the Critical Review. 

"We are pleased with the thoroughness and scientific accuracy of the in- 
terpretations. ... It seems to us that the prevailing characteristic of the 
book is common sense, fortified by learning and piety." — The Herald and 
Presbyter. 

"It is a valuable and welcome addition to our somewhat scanty stock of 
first-class commentaries on the Third Gospel. By its scholarly thorough- 
ness it well sustains the reputation which the International Series has 
already won." — Prof. J. H. Thayer, 0} Harvard University. 



The International Critical Commentary 

Romans 

By the Rev. WILLIAM SANDAY, D.D., LL.D. 

Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford 

and the 
Rev. A. C. HEADLAM, M.A., D.D. 

Principal of King's College, London 



Crown 8vo. Net, $3.00 

" We do not hesitate to commend this as the best commentary on Romans 
yet written in English. It will do much to popularize this admirable and 
much needed series, by showing that it is possible to be critical and scholarly 
and at the same time devout and spiritual, and intelligible to plain Bible 
readers." — The Church Standard. 

" A commentary with a very distinct character and purpose of its own, 
which brings to students and ministers an aid which they cannot obtain else- 
where. . . . There is probably no other commentary in which criticism has 
been employed so successfully and impartially to bring out the author's 
thought." — N. Y. Independent. 

"We have nothing but heartiest praise for the weightier matters of the 
commentary. It is not only critical, but exegetical, expository, doctrinal, 
practical, and eminently spiritual. The positive conclusions of the books 
are very numerous and are stoutly, gloriously evangelical. . . . The com- 
mentary does not fail to speak with the utmost reverence of the whole word 
of God." — The Congregationalist. 



Ephesians and Colossians 

By the Rev. T. K. ABBOTT, B.D., D.Litt. 

Formerly Professor of Biblical Greek, now of Hebrew, Trinity College, 

Dublin 



Crown 8vo. Net, $2.50 

"The exegesis based so solidly on tho rock foundation of philology is 
argumentatively and convincingly strong. A spiritual and evangelical tenor 
pervades the interpretation from first to last. . . . These elements, to- 
gether with the author's full-orbed vision of the truth, with his discrimina- 
tive judgment and his felicity of expression, make this the peer of any com- 
mentary on these important letters." — The Standard. 

"An exceedingly careful and painstaking piece of work. The introduc- 
tory discussions of questions bearing on the authenticity and integrity (of 
the epistles) are clear and candid, and the exposition of the text displays a 
fine scholarship and insight." — Ndrthwcstcm Christian Advocate. 



The International Critical Commentary 



Philippians and Philemon 

By the Rev. MARVIN R. VINCENT, D.D. 

Professor of Biblical Literature in Union Theological Seminary, New York 



Crown 8vo. Net, $2.00 



"Of the merits of the work it is enough to say that it is worthy of its 
place in the noble undertaking to which it belongs. It is full of just such 
information as the Bible student, lay or clerical, needs; and while giving an 
abundance of the truths of erudition to aid the critical student of the text, it 
abounds also in that more popular information which enables the attentive 
reader almost to put himself in St. Paul's place, to see with the eyes and feel 
with the heart of the Apostle to the Gentiles." — Boston Advertiser. 

"Throughout the work scholarly research is evident. It commends itself 
by its clear elucidation, its keen exegesis which marks the word study on 
every page, its compactness of statement and its simplicity of arrangement." 
— Lutheran World. 



St. Peter and St. Jude 

By the Rev. CHARLE5 BIGG, D.D. 

Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford 



Crown 8vo. Net, $2.50 



"His commentary is very satisfactory indeed. His notes are particularly 
valuable. We know of no work on these Epistles which is so full and satis- 
factory." — The Living Church. 

"Canon Bigg's work is pre-eminently characterized by judicial open- 
mindedness and sympathetic insight into historical conditions. His realistic 
interpretation of the relations of the apostles and the circumstances of the 
early church renders the volume invaluable to students of these themes. 
The exegetical work in the volume rests on the broad basis of careful lin- 
guistic study, acquaintance with apocalyptic literature and the writings of 
the Fathers, a sane judgment, and good sense." — American Journal of 
Theology. 



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